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FACT AND FANCY 



IN 



SPIRITUALISM, THEOSOPHY 



AND 



PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 



BY 

G. G. HUBBELL 



"The most helpful quality which has aided me in psychical problems and 
has made me lucky in physical discoveries, has simply been my knowledge — 
my vital knowledge, if I may so term it — of my own ignorance." — Sir William 
Crookes, F. R. S., in his Presidential Address before the Society for Psychical 
Research 



CINCINNATI 

THE ROBERT CLARKE COMPANY 

1901 






THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 
Two Cohes Received 

JUN. 26 1901 

Copyright entry 
£ CLASS Ct-XXc. Ne. 
COPY 3. ! 



--.«•#* 



Copyright, 1901 
by g. g. hubbell 









Dedication. 

TO THE REVERED MEMORY OF 

MY WIFE, 

WHOSE PURE AND UNSELFISH LIFE WAS, 

AND SHALL CONTINUE TO BE, 

MY INSPIRATION TO HIGHER IDEALS, 

AND IN WHOSE UNTIMELY DEATH THE WORLD 

LOST ONE OF ITS NOBLEST CHARACTERS. 



PREFACE. 

The request of numerous friends that I pub- 
lish, in a collected and permanent form, a se- 
ries of lectures delivered before the Ohio 
Liberal Society of Cincinnati, is my apology 
for placing this little volume before the public. 
Not having been originally intended for pub- 
lication, the treatment of the subjects therein 
discussed is somewhat desultory, and lacking 
in continuity of thought and unity of design. 

The occasional repetition noticeable in some 
of the lectures, of matter contained in another 
of the series, is due to the same cause. 

Very little pretension, if any, is made to 
originality, unless it be in the selection 
and arrangement of the matter, and in the 
literary form in which it is cast. The fre- 
quent use of the first person, as well as the 
somewhat rhetorical style employed, resulted 
from the necessity of adapting my thoughts 
and utterances to delivery from the rostrum. 



Preface. 

Throughout I have endeavored to be fair 

and temperate ; but, believing fully in freedom 

of thought and speech, I have not hesitated to 

freely express my convictions, holding with 

Macaulay, that " the battles of Truth should 

not be fought with the weapons of error," 

and that in the conflict with error, Truth need 

have no cause to fear her final triumph if 

she be given a fair chance. 

G. G. H. 

Cincinnati, April 14, 1901. 

vi 



CONTENTS. 



I. Madame Blavatsky, the Nineteenth rAGS 

Century Mystic i 

II. Psychical Research and a Future 

Life 61 

III. The Bearing of Psychical Re- 

search on Modern Materialism. 104 

IV. Some Facts about Spiritualism. . 160 



MADAME BLAVATSKY, 

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY MYSTIC. 



One of the most interesting characters that 
figured prominently before the public during 
the last quarter of the nineteenth century was 
Madame H. P. Blavatsky. Many looked upon 
her with the reverential awe that the devout 
Catholic of the Middle Ages bestowed upon 
his favorite saint. Still others saw in her only 
a vulgar impostor, while to others her character, 
life and work appeared an enigma. 

To the student of psychology and compara- 
tive mythology her life affords an interesting 
illustration of the manner in which religions 
are made, or rather initiated ; for while relig- 
ions, like everything else, are the result of ev- 
olution, the original impulse may have been 
given by some great striking personality. 
Such personalities were Buddha, Jesus and 
Mohammed. Had Madame Blavatsky lived 
during the Middle Ages, when ignorance and 
superstition were rife, she might have been 
the founder of a new religion and taken rank 

9 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

with the founders of other great religions in 
the world's history. But the intellectual con- 
ditions of the nineteenth century were unfa- 
vorable, the mental atmosphere hostile, to the 
development of a new religion involving so 
large an element of so-called supernaturalism. 
The Founders of great religions, seen through 
the perspective of the ages, their figures dim 
and shadowy, surrounded by the glamour shed 
by myth and legend, performing miracles, still 
appeal to the emotions of their followers. 
Even when the intellectual conditions that 
made belief in their miracles possible have dis- 
appeared and have been replaced by the spirit 
of rationalism produced by science and in- 
creased knowledge, there still remains in the 
mind a lingering belief in the miraculous. This 
arises in part from the difficulty of destroying 
childhood associations ; and in our hours of 
weakness and mental lassitude we often find 
old beliefs and superstitions resuming their 
sway over the intellect, long since emancipated, 
as we supposed, from their tyranny. And, as 
with Madame De Stael, while we do not believe 
in ghosts, we still find ourselves afraid of them, 
and even after science has exorcised the de- 
mons of superstition their evil influence often 
lingers long after their expulsion. 



Madame Blavatsky. 

But Madame Blavatsky succeeded in making 
but a feeble impression on nineteenth century 
rationalism. It was hard for the average per- 
son to believe that this homely and common- 
place looking woman exercised powers over 
the laws and forces of Nature, here in this 
nineteenth century, of which ordinary mortals 
were totally devoid, but which he was ready 
enough to believe were possessed and exer- 
cised by Jesus two thousand years ago. She 
was therefore forced to be content with a few 
select followers, many of whom, however, with 
the blind and unreasoning credulity that has 
ever characterized religious fanaticism, contin- 
ued to worship her and believe in her occult 
powers, long after she was shown to be an im- 
postor by evidence that only the willfully blind 
could reject. 

Helen P. Blavatsky was of noble descent, 
and was the daughter of Colonel Peter Hahn, 
of the Russian army. She was born at Eka- 
terinoslaw, in the southern part of Russia, on 
July 2>°> 183 1, during the terrible epidemic 
that was decimating Europe at that time, her 
advent into the world being hastened by the 
prevailing consternation. When born, she was 
so weak and frail that the baptism had to be 
expedited, lest she should die "with the burden 

11 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

of original sin on her soul." During the per- 
formance of the baptismal ceremony, which 
was celebrated with all the gorgeous rites of 
the Greek Church, a conflagration was started 
by the accidental igniting of the robes of one 
of the officiating priests, and resulted in several 
persons being severely burned. This was in- 
terpreted by the superstitious as a bad omen, 
presaging a life of misfortune for the future 
seeress. 

Madame Blavatsky's mother died while the 
former was a young child, and her rearing and 
education were entrusted to her grandparents, 
with whom she took up her residence. They 
lived in an old mansion at Saratow, abounding 
in subterranean galleries, abandoned passages 
and weird nooks, looking more like a medieval 
castle than a modern structure. The young 
girl spent hours in roaming through its dark 
passages, holding converse, we are told, with 
the spirits of its former tenants, or delving 
deep into some ancient work on demonology 
or folklore. From earliest infancy she had 
shown a leaning to mysticism, listening with 
childish delight and credulity to narratives 
dealing with fairies, gnomes, hobgoblins, and 
those mythical beings with which the imagina- 
tion of childhood peoples the rural surround- 

12 



Madame Blavatsky. 

ings. Her grandparents often found her talk- 
ing apparently to herself, and on being ques- 
tioned she would declare that she had been 
talking to a hunchback boy, or some other in- 
visible being, and expressed surprise that her 
grandparents did not see him. 

In those days there was some superstition 
connected with almost every building in rural 
Russia, and belief in these superstitions was 
almost universal among the common people. 
It was in this atmosphere of credulity and su- 
perstition that Madame Blavatsky was reared, 
the original bent of her mind to mysticism 
being thus strengthened and confirmed. And, 
if we are to credit her biographer, her psychic 
experiences were not confined to communion 
with invisible spirits. We are informed that 
her life was probably saved on several occa- 
sions by the intervention of some invisible 
power. 

Once, while standing on tiptoe on a stack of 
books, attempting to reach a portrait hanging 
on the wall of the Saratow mansion, she lost 
her balance and fell, but was sustained and 
saved from injury by some invisible agency. 
On another occasion she would have been 
thrown from her horse and seriously injured 

13 



r 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

had it not been for the same invisible sustain- 
ing force. 

At the age of seventeen, being challenged 
to find any one who would marry her — even 
an old man — in a spirit of pure defiance and 
perversity she married General Blavatsky, a 
man old enough to be her grandfather. The 
marriage ceremony was scarcely over ere she 
regretted her youthful folly and attempted to 
escape the dreaded consummation of the nup- 
tial rites. But General Blavatsky was not to 
be deprived of his lawful rights, and carried his 
child-bride, almost by force, to his castle, and 
compelled her to live with him for three months, 
at the end of which time the youthful wife 
abandoned her aged spouse never to return. 

The next ten years of her life were spent in 
wanderings all over the civilized world — India, 
Egypt, Greece, South America and the United 
States being visited. In these travels we al- 
ways find her embracing every opportunity to 
gratify her inordinate craving for mysticism. 
The fakir of India, the magician of Egypt, the 
medicine man of North America, and even the 
Vodoo man being each in turn visited and made 
to yield his quota of occult lore. 

In 1858, she returned to Russia and took up 
her residence with her father, Colonel Hahn. 

14 



Madame Blavatsky. 

At that time Spiritualism was attracting wide 
attention, and Madame Blavatsky's natural 
leaning to mysticism caused her to take a deep 
interest in a subject that dealt with the doings 
of ghosts and other mysterious phenomena. 
In fact, her entire life up to this date, if we are 
to credit her biographer, had been filled with 
marvelous events that were without parallel in 
the life of any spiritual medium. Scarcely a 
day passed without some remarkable exhibition 
of her psychic power taking place. These oc- 
currences rest almost entirely on the evi- 
dence of Madame Blavatsky's sister, Madame 
Jelihowsky, who has published a narrative of this 
part of the career of the future seeress. Chairs, 
tables and other objects seemed to be animated 
and obeyed her slightest command. Her fa- 
ther, an obstinate skeptic and disciple of Vol- 
taire, whose wit had been leveled against 
another class of superstitions in the last cen- 
tury, was converted, and spent many an idle 
hour talking to " Helen's spirits," as he called 
the manifesting intelligences. The piano was 
played upon by invisible fingers, messages 
rapped out by means of the alphabet, and other 
wonders too numerous to mention performed, 
apparently without the conscious agency of 
Madame Blavatsky. 

15 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

On one occasion her younger brother laugh- 
ingly ridiculed the antics performed by the in- 
visibles, and was challenged by his sister to lift 
a small table which she placed under her ne- 
cromantic spell. We are told that the boy's 
most powerful efforts were unavailing to budge 
it until his sister, with a wave of her hand, re- 
moved the spell, and the table became so light 
that the lad came very near being precipitated 
to the floor by the force expended in the effort 
to lift it. 

At another time a police officer visited the 
residence of Colonel Hahn in search of a mur- 
derer. Colonel Hahn laughingly suggested 
that " Helen's spirits" be consulted regarding 
the murderer's whereabouts. The police officer 
expressed his skepticism in language more em- 
phatic than polite, and said the "horned and 
hoofed gentlemen," as he facetiously called the 
invisible intelligences, might undertake a con- 
tract they could not perform. The raps being 
evoked, the information was conveyed that the 
murderer was at that minute concealed in a 
hay-loft in a certain village, the name and ex- 
act location of which were given. This infor- 
mation, we are told, was subsequently verified 
in every detail. 

Instances of this kind might be multiplied 

16 



Madame Blavatsky. 

to show that Madame Blavatsky claimed to 
possess what the Spiritualists would regard as 
strong mediumistic powers ; yet, at a subse- 
quent stage of her checkered career, when 
Spiritualism had fallen somewhat into public 
disfavor, she earnestly deprecated any associa- 
tion of her name with the Spiritualistic faith. 
She claimed that Spiritualistic phenomena 
were produced by the "astral shells" and by 
the " elementals," as they are called in Theo- 
sophical parlance. 

It is interesting to note how Madame Blavat- 
sky gradually evolved from what must be re- 
garded as a spiritual medium into a Theoso- 
phist ; how the ambition to become the founder 
of a new religion or system of philosophy 
gradually took root in her mind and developed 
and bore fruit in the founding of the Theo- 
sophical Society ; how she enlisted her psychic 
powers, or what the more skeptical would call 
her skill in jugglery, in popularizing Theos- 
ophy, by appealing to the element of won- 
der that is so largely developed in all human 
minds. This all makes a very interesting study 
in Psychology, but the limits of my lecture will 
allow only a brief reference to it. 

In 1873, Madame Blavatsky arrived in New 
York, striking this mundane sphere inhabited 

17 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

by us poor blind mortals like a brilliant meteor 
from the celestial regions, charged alike with 
electricity and divine inspiration. Soon after 
arriving in New York, she made the acquaint- 
ance of Henry S. Olcott, who was destined by 
the mysterious decrees of fate to become the 
active coadjutor of Madame Blavatsky in the 
founding of the Theosophical Society and the 
propagation of the new faith. 

H. S. Olcott had served with some distinc- 
tion in the Civil War, and at its close engaged 
in the practice of law in New York. He va- 
ried his law practice by occasional literary work 
in the way of newspaper and magazine writ- 
ing. Previous to his visit to the Eddys, of 
which I shall speak presently, it appears that 
he had taken some interest in Spiritualism, 
which was at that time provoking quite a dis- 
cussion, owing to the recent experiments of 
Professor Wm. Crookes, with the famous me- 
dium, D. D. Home. In this wordy conflict 
such intellects as Alfred R. Wallace and Pro- 
fessor Wm. Crookes were engaged on one side, 
and Professors Tyndall, Huxley and Carpen- 
ter on the other. 

The Eddy brothers were at this time giving 
their materializations at their home at Chitten- 
den, Vt., to which crowds of people daily 

iS 



Madame Blavatsky. 

flocked. The spirits, clothed in flesh, were 
said to walk forth from the cabinet, and were 
touched, handled and inspected by the curious. 
The newspapers teemed with accounts of the 
marvelous phenomena. Colonel Olcott visited 
the scene of these ghostly manifestations, and 
soon became convinced of their genuineness. 
He wrote a circumstantial account of what he 
witnessed for the New York Sun and Daily 
Graphic, illustrated with sketches of the spirits. 
It was there that he first met Madame Bla- 
vatsky. The scarlet Garibaldian shirt and the 
short mop-like hair of the Prophetess attracted 
Olcott's attention, and, having introduced him- 
self, the two were soon absorbed in conversa- 
tion on Spiritualism, occultism and kindred 
subjects. Oriental occultism was new to Olcott, 
but Madame Blavatsky found in him an eager 
and sympathetic pupil, whose mind, owing to 
long familiarity with the doctrines of modern 
Spiritualism, offered a soil well fitted for the 
reception and growth of the more subtle and 
refined doctrines of Eastern mysticism. 

Thus originated a friendship that continued 
till the death of Madame Blavatsky — a friend- 
ship that never wavered on the part of Ol- 
cott, and that disregarded the sneers, scoffs 
and denunciations leveled by a cold, igno- 

19 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

rant and skeptical world against her whom the 
disciple continued to the last to regard as the 
wisest and purest of women. Olcott's faith 
in her withstood the most overwhelming evi- 
dence of imposture, the shock of public ex- 
posure, and even confession of systematic 
fraud — it was a sublime faith, and worthy of 
a better cause. 

The extraordinary fascination exercised by 
her over the mind of an educated and intelli- 
gent man like Olcott, almost causes us to 
credit her with the possession of the occult 
powers to which she laid claim and in which 
the disciple firmly believed. His easy cre- 
dulity in relation to everything pertaining to 
her alleged occult powers, is one of the most 
striking psychological marvels of modern 
times. To her intimate friends she referred to 
him as her "psychological baby," in allusion, 
no doubt, to this childish gullibility. 

Olcott has given the world, in his "Old 
Diary Leaves," a record of his personal recol- 
lections of the Priestess, covering the period 
from the time of his introduction to her at the 
Eddy's down to a time shortly before her 
death. This record is full of the marvels per- 
formed by her in his presence, at various times, 
many of which would throw the miracles of 

20 



Madame Blavatsky. 

Jesus into the shade, and which are related 
with a childlike simplicity and belief in their 
reality that would make an interesting study 
in what might be aptly called the " Psychology 
of Credulity." He tells us that on one occa- 
sion, while sitting talking to Madame Blavat- 
sky in her apartments, she was seen to kick 
her foot under the table, uttering the exclama- 
tion, "Get out, you nasty thing!" Olcott, 
on questioning her as to the meaning of this 
display of temper, was informed by the Mad- 
ame that one of those nasty elementals or na- 
ture spirits was under the table. The Madame 
was engaged just then in hemming some 
towels, and Olcott suggested that the ele- 
mental be made to do the work. After some 
reflection this suggestion was acted upon, the 
toweling, with needle and thread, being placed 
in a darkened book case. At the expiration of 
ten minutes the towels were removed from the 
book case hemmed, though not very artistic- 
ally. 

On another occasion a desire was expressed 
for some grapes, and the Madame, pointing to 
some article of furniture in the room — a ward- 
robe, I believe — the grapes were found hang- 
ing thereon — miraculously produced by the 
thaumaturgic powers of the Priestess. The 

21 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc, 

probable explanation of these marvels is to be 
found in the supposition that the Madame had 
carefully arranged for their production by plac- 
ing the towels and grapes where they were 
found, and then skillfully leading the conversa- 
tion up to the subject, and thus affording an 
opportunity to produce a marvel off hand, and 
apparently originating in the suggestion of the 
unsophisticated Olcott. This view is borne 
out by the revelations made by Dr. Richard 
Hodgson in his report to the Psychical Re- 
search Society on the methods employed to 
produce various Theosophical marvels. 

In September, 1875, George H. Felt deliv- 
ered a lecture on the " Lost Canon of Propor- 
tion of the Egyptians," to a few persons 
assembled at the residence of Madame Blavat- 
sky. Felt had been a profound student of 
Egyptian archaeology, and professed to have 
discovered, in the course of his researches, the 
key by which the symbolism of the Egyptian 
monuments could be deciphered. From an 
examination of certain grotesque dog-headed 
figures on these monuments he inferred that 
the ancient Egyptians had knowledge of the 
existence of what he called the elementals or 
nature spirits, which are supposed by Theoso- 
phists to be an order of invisible beings inferior 

22 



Madame Blavatsky. 

to man. Felt further inferred that the initiates 
in Egyptian occultism were able, by certain 
mystical formulas, to evoke and control them 
and make them do their bidding. This was 
accomplished, I suppose, after the manner of 
Aladdin, who, as you remember, evoked the 
genius of the wonderful lamp by the simple 
process of rubbing it. 

Mr. Felt claimed to have discovered the for- 
mula by which these elementals or hobgoblins 
could be evoked, and promised to disclose the 
secret in a future lecture. In proof of his 
claim Felt cited his experience on a certain oc- 
casion. While engaged in his apartments in 
working on a drawing of an Egyptian zodiac, 
the dog and cat in the room exhibited signs of 
great uneasiness, which satisfied him that they 
were subject to some occult influence proceed- 
ing in some mysterious way from the pictorial 
representation of the zodiac on which his mind 
was then concentrated. This is remarkable 
reasoning, and on a par with other Theosoph- 
ical speculations. I fear that a little investiga- 
tion would have disclosed a very mundane 
origin of the dog and cat's uneasiness — prob- 
ably another dog or cat in the street scented 
by the ones in the room. Does not science, 
as well as common sense, demand that we look 

23 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

for causes under our own noses before going 
to the moon for them ? 

That reminds me of an old Spiritualist I 
knew years ago — a man about eighty, simple- 
minded and ingenuous as a child in his faith in 
Spiritualistic marvels. He saw spirits in 
everything, and was the dupe of every impu- 
dent impostor who wore the garb of a me- 
dium. One evening-, while talking to him in 
his apartments on his favorite topic of spir- 
its, we were interrupted by a tapping noise 
outside on the porch, which came at regular 
intervals. The old gentleman said, " Spirits, 
no doubt about it." I quietly went out on 
the porch and ascertained that the noise was 
caused by the dripping of water from a leaky 
gutter. I have always found that a little in- 
vestigation or cross-examination of the wit- 
nesses would convert these seeming marvels 
into ordinary commonplace incidents. 

I may add, in this connection, that poor 
Olcott's credulity swallowed all the wild state- 
ments of Felt regarding the elementals and 
his power of evoking them, but he was doomed 
to disappointment, as Felt never produced the 
promised elementals. But Olcott's faith was 
not diminished by this failure, for he informs 
us that he had good reason to believe that 

24 



Madame Blavatsky. 

the elementals actually existed and formed 
part of the order of Nature. In support of 
this he tells us a little Arabian Nights' tale, in 
which a strange Hindoo was the chief actor, 
and played the character of Eastern magician. 
The Hindoo, whom Olcott had accidentally 
met on the street in New York, on the latter's 
invitation accompanied him to his room, and 
there gave him an exhibition of occult power. 
By certain mystical passes the Hindoo caused 
a strange landscape to appear in the room, 
about which shadowy forms flitted which Ol- 
cott was told were elementals. I suppose 
most of you will think that Olcott had been 
imbibing too freely, or had been hypnotized 
by the strange Hindoo. 

The lecture of Felt on Egyptian antiquities 
led to one important result — namely, the 
founding of the Theosophical Society. At 
the close of the lecture Colonel Olcott sug-- 
gested founding a society to investigate Ori- 
ental religions and the hidden laws of Nature. 
The suggestion met a favorable reception, and 
''Miracle Club" was proposed as a name. 
Think of a miracle club in the latter part of 
the nineteenth century ! 

After some discussion it was decided to 
christen the new society " Theosophical Soci- 

25 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

ety." The word "Theosophy" means God 
wisdom, or Divine wisdom, and had been used 
before to designate various religious and phil- 
osophical systems. The purposes of the new 
society, as set forth in its constitution, were the 
forming of the nucleus of a universal brother- 
hood of mankind, without distinction of race, 
creed or color ; to promote the study of Aryan 
and other Eastern literatures, religions and 
sciences, and to investigate unexplained laws 
of nature and psychical powers of man. 
Colonel Olcott was elected President, and 
Madame Blavatsky, Corresponding Secretary. 

The society soon attracted a considerable 
membership, drawn principally from the ranks 
of the Spiritualists. The Theosophical move- 
ment received most of its religious and philo- 
sophical doctrines from Madame Blavatsky's 
fertile mind, who had borrowed them from 
Buddhism, Spiritualism, Neo-Platonism, the 
Kabballa, and numerous other sources. It 
appears, however, that Buddhism furnished 
most of the materials, such changes being 
made as were necessary to make it more accept- 
able to Western ideas and culture. 

In the accession of A. P. Sinnett to the 
Theosophical movement, a valuable exponent 
of its philosophy was obtained. In fact, the 

26 



Madame Blavatsky. 

new cult owed as much, if not more, of its 
philosophy to this gentleman's speculative 
genius than it did to Madame Blavatsky 's 
plagiarisms. In the " Occult World," " Eso- 
teric Buddhism," "The Growth of the Soul," 
and in numerous articles contributed to the 
Theosophist, Sinnett expounded the philosophy 
of the new cult. An elaborate and fantastic 
system of cosmology was constructed, in which 
Western science was grafted on Oriental mys- 
ticism, and in which Herbert Spencer and evo- 
lution were made to support the chimera of 
reincarnation and kindred fantasies. We are 
told that the number seven exerts some mys- 
terious power or virtue in the cosmological 
evolution there outlined — in the same way, 
probably, that the number thirteen has a fatal- 
ity attached to it — the cosmical processes be- 
ing influenced by the mystical seven in the 
same way that the individual atom called man 
is swayed by the fatal thirteen. 

Another class of mystics of the day claim cer- 
tain occult powers by virtue of being a seventh 
daughter of a seventh daughter, etc. This is 
the same kind of vulgar superstition that rec- 
ognizes virtue in certain passes of the hand 
and in certain geometrical figures and dia- 
grams. Think of the grand processes of Na- 

27 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

ture being influenced by such childish trivial- 
ities — the stars halting in their majestic sweep 
in obedience to the pass of a magician's hand. 

It was at one time supposed that maiden's 
blood was a necessary ingredient of the fabled 
elixir of life. What mysterious virtues maid- 
en's blood possesses only an alchemist can tell. 

Olcott also contributes his testimony to the 
occult virtues of the number seven in " Old 
Diary Leaves." He says: "I notice in Mr. 
Sinnett's book the coincidence that she (Mad- 
ame Blavatsky) arrived in New York on the 
seventh of July, 1873 ; that is to say, on the 
seventh day of the seventh month of her forty- 
second year (6xj); and that our meeting was 
postponed until I should have attained my forty- 
second year. And, to anticipate, it must also be 
remarked that she died in the seventeenth year 
of our Theosophical relationship. Add to this 
the further fact, recently published by me in 
the Theosophist, that Mrs. Annie Besant came to 
H. P. B. as an applicant for membership in the 
seventh month of the seventeeth year of her 
final withdrawal from Christian communion, 
and we have a very pretty set of coincidences 
to bear in mind." Who can resist the force of 
such evidence to the occult virtues of seven — 
only he whom a gross materialism has blinded 

28 



Madame Blavatsky. 

to spiritual truth. But I fear I am descending 
from the sublime to the ridiculous. 

We will return to cosmical evolution, and to 
the important part played by seven in the or- 
derly progression of events — in other words, 
leave this mundane sphere and return to the 
clouds. 

The occult scientist, as he calls himself, tells 
us that the evolution of the races of man is 
traced in periods of seven ; that the actual num- 
ber of objective worlds belonging to our sys- 
tem is seven ; that there are seven kingdoms of 
Nature, and that man passes through a series 
of seven rounds in his evolution. Man con- 
tains seven principles, called respectively the 
"body," "vitality," "astral body," "animal 
soul," "human soul," "spiritual soul," and 
lastly "spirit." All these principles, except 
the first, the body, are invisible to our gross 
material senses, and pass, when we die, to their 
corresponding spiritual spheres or planes ot 
existence, of which there are seven. 

The doctrine of reincarnation, borrowed 
from Buddhism, occupies a prominent place in 
the Theosophical system. At death, accord- 
ing to this fantastic system, the first three prin- 
ciples are released from the body and are ab- 
sorbed into the surrounding atmosphere and 

29 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

earth, thus losing their individuality. The fourth 
principle, or animal soul, passes into what is 
known in Theosophical parlance as " Kama 
Loca," or the region of desire, where it re- 
mains until it is purged of all earth desires and 
attractions — a kind of purgatory — where it is 
fitted for Devachan or Heaven. " Kama Loca " 
is also the abode of the astral body before it 
becomes disintegrated and of the elementals 
or Nature spirits, those slaves-of-the-lamp em- 
ployed to perform occult marvels by the ini- 
tiates in occultism. When sufficiently purified 
or divested of earth desires and attractions, 
the fourth principle unites with the fifth and 
enters into Devachan, the abode of heav- 
enly bliss. Here the soul finds every wish 
gratified and bathes in indescribable bliss. 
Nothing that the heart desires is absent. Being 
only a subjective state, anything that is de- 
sired — beautiful surroundings, books, scenery, 
friends who still remain in the body, or any- 
thing else upon which the affections may cen- 
ter — are created and supplied by the mere 
exercise of the imagination. Here the soul 
may remain for years and ages until, desiring 
new experiences on earth, it descends and is 
reincarnated, finding some body that offers a 
fitting receptacle for its embodiment. 

30 



Madame Blavatsky. 

Sinnett says that when the soul is ready for 
reincarnation it puts forth a sprout or shoot, 
like a grain of corn, and enters the new body 
and gradually vegetates or develops therein in 
analogy to the processes in the vegetable 
world. We have the authority of one of the 
chief pillars of the Theosophical faith for the 
statement that this reincarnation may occur 
eight hundred times, there being sometimes an 
interval of a thousand years between each in- 
carnation, during which time the soul bathes in 
the bliss of Devachan. 

Strange as it may appear to us, the soul's 
evolution or progress is worked out through 
its pilgrimage on earth, each earth life serving 
as a stepping stone for higher and higher spir- 
itual development, the spiritual development 
attained at the end of each earth pilgrimage 
becoming the starting point in the succeeding 
reincarnation. This is the law of Karma or 
compensation, and corresponds, we are told, 
with the law of conservation of energy that 
obtains in the physical world. And so the soul 
continues to progress through years, ages and 
cycles, always retaining its individuality amid 
the clash of suns and the war of worlds, each 
succeeding pilgrimage on earth marking a 
higher and higher spiritual development, until, 

3* 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

in the course of countless ages, all sin and 
earth desire being purged away, the perfected 
soul attains Nirvana, and is absorbed into the 
all-pervading soul of the Divinity — becomes 
one with God and returns to earth no more, 
and thus is accomplished — 

"The one far-off divine event 
To which the whole creation moves." 

According to some interpreters of Oriental 
philosophy, this means annihilation. Accord- 
ing to Theosophy, however, it means an in- 
conceivably intensified spiritual existence — a 
state in which the individual soul has been 
merged in the All Soul, and yet retains its con- 
sciousness, I fear, however, that this is a 
metaphysical refinement too subtle for our 
minds steeped in the materialism of Western 
science, and we must dismiss it as one of those 
mysteries never intended to be solved by hu- 
man reason. 

This may be a very beautiful philosophy, 
but the question will arise, no doubt, in some 
of your minds, what facts are there to support 
it? For my part, I must confess that I have 
not found any. It appears to my mind, unini- 
tiated in the mysteries of Oriental occultism, 
following only the feeble and uncertain light 
of my poor, profane reason, and guided only 

32 



Madame Blavatsky. 

by my limited experience, to be a medley of 
fantastic speculations, discredited alike by 
analogy and reason. 

Theosophy does not proceed by the labo- 
rious methods employed by our poor, de- 
spised Western science — namely, induction, 
observation and experiment, but relies for its 
knowledge of man and the universe upon rev- 
elations proceeding, as its disciples claim, 
from the illuminated minds of the so-called 
Mahatmas, Masters or Adepts. These myth- 
ical gentlemen play the same part in the The- 
osophical scheme that the Pope does in the 
Catholic Hierarchy. The Theosophists repose 
implicit faith in their revelations, and obey 
their behests with the same unreasoning faith 
that the faithful Catholic yields to his eccle- 
siastical superior. This faith dispenses with 
the proof required by our poor Western sci- 
ence to support its conclusions. 

The ingenious Theosophist located the 
Mahatmas in the solitude of the Himalayan 
mountains, in Thibet, a region almost inaccess- 
ible to the most daring travelers, and which 
but few, if any, have succeeded in penetrating 
since the time of Marco Polo. Like the 
Christian anchorites of old, they dwelt in 
caves, leading ascetic lives, devoting them- 

33 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

selves to constant meditation, and seldom 
holding any communication with the outside 
world. By long study and meditation, and by 
inheritance from Mahatmas living in previous 
ages, they are said to have acquired a knowl- 
edge of the laws and forces of Nature by 
which they are enabled to do things that 
would be regarded as miraculous by our 
Western science. Just as the wonders of our 
science appear miraculous to the savage, so 
the feats of the Mahatmas appear miraculous 
to us. These Mahatmas are said to have 
Chelas, or pupils, in all parts of the civilized 
world, to whom they at times appear in their 
astral bodies, giving instructions and advice, 
their physical bodies reposing in the meantime 
in their caves in the Himalayan mountains. 
Colonel Olcott was privileged to see one of 
these mysterious beings. It occurred one eve- 
ning while he was reading in his apartments 
in New York, shortly after the departure of 
Madame Blavatsky, whom he had been assist- 
ing in the preparation for the press of " Isis 
Unveiled." While his eyes were fixed on the 
book he was reading, some object flitted 
across the field of his vision, and, raising his 
head, he was startled to see what appeared to 
be a tall Hindoo, with a majestic and benig- 

34 



Madame Blavatsky. 

nant countenance, standing before him. Olcott 
tells us that he intuitively recognized the figure 
as that of a Mahatma known as Koot Hoomi. 
The spectral Hindoo took a vacant chair, and 
engaged in conversation with Olcott on sub- 
jects connected with occultism. He finally 
rose to leave, when the thought occurred to 
Olcott that if he had some means of determin- 
ing whether the figure was an hallucination he 
would feel better satisfied. The Hindoo 
smiled, as if divining Olcott's thoughts, and 
removing- the materialized turban from his 
head, laid it on the table and disappeared. 
Colonel Olcott has religiously preserved this 
turban to confound the skeptic. Madame 
Blavatsky was living in the same house at the 
time — which I think was occupied as the The- 
osophical headquarters — and some evil-minded 
critic, whose devotion to Western science had 
blinded his spiritual vision, hinted that she 
may have bribed a Hindoo to personate the 
Mahatma on this occasion. Be that as it 
may, the doubts, sneers and sarcasms of the 
unbelieving never shook the faith of Olcott ; 
he simply attributed them to the ignorance, 
prejudice and spiritual blindness of a super- 
ficial world. 

Next to the credulity of the Spiritualist 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

comes that of the Theosophist, which is 
equally blind to all evidence of fraud or de- 
lusion — 

"The alchemist may doubt the shining gold 

His crucible pours out, 
But faith, fanatic faith, once wedded fast 
To some dear falsehood, 

Hugs it to the last." 

The Theosophists believe that the ancient 
religions, especially Buddhism, have an eso- 
teric side — an inner or hidden meaning, as well 
as external forms and ceremonies. The eso- 
teric meaning is intended for the initiated, and 
is generally veiled in symbols, while the exter- 
nal forms and ceremonies are intended for the 
ignorant multitude. A large part of " Isis Un- 
veiled " is devoted to an attempt to prove this 
proposition. Madame Blavatsky and her dis- 
ciples claim to have discovered the key by 
which the symbolism in which the esoteric 
meaning of the ancient Egyptian religion was 
veiled, could be read. To be sure, scholars and 
philologists, like Max Mueller, declare there is 
no esoteric meaning in the Buddhistic or Egyp- 
tian religion ; that they have no meaning that 
is not open to the learned and unlearned, the 
initiated and uninitiated alike. But what avails 

36 



Madame Blavatsky. 

such statements as against the superhuman 
wisdom of the Mahatmas, who affirm the con- 
trary. 

The Theosophist tells us that those sym- 
bolical inscriptions found on the monuments 
and temples of ancient Egypt show that the 
ancients possessed a knowledge of the laws 
and processes of Nature superior to our own, 
and that by means of that knowledge the 
forces and laws of Nature could be controlled 
and seeming miracles worked. The Theoso- 
phist tells us further that in every age there 
have lived men to whom this knowledge had 
been transmitted, but who were afraid to give 
it to the world lest the ignorance and supersti- 
tion of the times should cause them to be put 
to death as wizards or sorcerers. When these 
repositories of occult knowledge did venture to 
write on the subject, their meaning was veiled 
in allegory and symbol that only the initiated 
could penetrate. 

Coming down to our own times, Bulwer 
Lytton, who wrote not more than twenty-five 
years ago, and is claimed by the Theosophists 
as an occultist, showed his belief, it is asserted, 
in so-called occultism in his novels, "A Strange 
Story," "Zanoni," and "The Coming Race." 
Fear of ridicule, it is said, caused him to 

37 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

convey his opinions in the form of romance. 
If, then, we are to believe the Theosophists, 
what is known as black magic, and a belief in 
which has always been regarded as a vulgar 
superstition, is an actual fact. If belief in 
Theosophy became general, I fear we would 
be in danger of a revival of medieval supersti- 
tion as degrading to the intellect as the fetish 
worship of the African savage. 

The disciple of Theosophy believes that the 
so-called Mahatmas and their Chelas, or pupils, 
to-day possess this superior knowledge of 
natural laws, and that this knowledge is as 
superior to our knowledge as ours is to that of 
the savage. To a savage, our telephone, steam 
engine and phonograph and other scientific 
inventions, are miracles. It is simply ignorance 
on one side and knowledge on the other. 

What appears miraculous to the savage is 
perfectly natural to us — what is miraculous to 
us is natural to the Mahatmas. This may be 
all right as an argument from general princi- 
ples, but we uninitiated Occidentals must still 
demand the evidence of the existence of the 
Mahatmas, and their supernormal powers — we 
can not accept them on faith. 

It has always struck me as very strange 
that, with all their boasted wisdom and power, 

33 



Madame Blavatsky. 

the Mahatmas had never given the world any 
useful invention, anything to promote the ma- 
terial well-being of mankind, while the science 
of Europe had achieved marvels in that direc- 
tion, and entirely without any aid from the 
clouds. 

The Theosophist will probably say that the 
Mahatmas are only interested in promoting 
the spiritual welfare of mankind. But the 
Church, in the past, has always professed to be 
interested in man's spiritual welfare, and in 
attempting to promote it has covered the 
earth with blood and tears. Just in propor- 
tion as man has neglected the gentlemen in 
the clouds, just in proportion as he has turned 
his attention to the despised earth, just in 
that proportion has he advanced. Civiliza- 
tion has kept pace with doubt, progress has 
followed in the wake of investigation, and 
to-day, when disbelief in the dogmas of the- 
ology is more widespread than ever before, 
morality, education, humanity and everything 
implied by civilization, are at their highest. 

To return to the Mahatmas. Madame Bla- 
vatsky professed to be guided by these gen- 
tlemen, receiving instructions and advice from 
them in letters that were miraculously thrown 
from the air, or which were found in locked 

39 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

drawers. Sometimes the Mahatmas wrote on 
the blank margin of letters that came through 
the post, or appeared in their astral bodies 
and communicated with her by word of 
mouth. 

The High Priestess claimed that much of 
her great work, " Isis Unveiled," was written 
or furnished by these mythical gentlemen. 
Olcott relates many interesting incidents in 
connection with the production of this work, 
in which the Mahatmas frequently figure. 
Sometimes, while sitting at work on her 
great book, "Isis Unveiled," a vacant ex- 
pression would come into her eyes and she 
would cease writing for a few minutes. When 
she resumed her writing, Olcott was informed 
by her that her master (Mahatma) had fur- 
nished her with some material, by holding 
before her eyes the astral duplicate of the 
book containing- the desired information, in 
many cases the book being one contained in 
the British Museum, or perhaps one lost 
when the famous library of Alexandria was 
destroyed by Christian vandalism. 

Sometimes the Mahatmas would write a 
dozen pages or more on blank paper placed 
in a drawer by Madame Blavatsky before re- 
tiring for the night. This was always found 

40 



Madame Blavatsky. 

perfect. The work is in two bulky volumes, 
and created quite a sensation when it first 
appeared, nearly twenty-five years ago. It 
makes great pretensions to scholarship, 
bristling with foot-notes, references to au- 
thorities, and learned citations in nearly a 
dozen languages. It received some very flat- 
tering notices, probably from persons whose 
lack of scholarship rendered them incompe- 
tent to estimate it at its true value. But rec- 
ognized scholars like Max Mueller pronounced 
it a medley of plagiarisms and blunders ; 
other critics pronounced it a hotch-potch of 
pseudo science and medieval superstition, in 
which the vagaries of alchemy and astrology 
were mingled with the conclusions of modern 
science. The work is profusely illustrated 
with geometrical and symbolical diagrams, 
supposed to have some occult significance 
that the ordinary mortal, infected by mate- 
rialistic science, is unable to understand. In 
it the writer professes to have found the 
hidden or esoteric meaning of the ancient re- 
ligions, which was veiled, the writer claimed, 
in symbol and allegory. It is true, Max 
Mueller asserts that there is no esoteric or 
secret meaning in the ancient religions — that 

41 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

there is only one meaning, which is open 
alike to the ignorant and the learned. 

Madame Blavatsky having launched this 
formidable work on the world, now took an 
active part in the propaganda of the new 
faith. 

In 1878, the headquarters of the Theosoph- 
ical Society were transferred from the sordid 
atmosphere of New York to Bombay, and 
subsequently to Madras, India, where the 
High Priestess took up her residence. The 
Society occupied an East Indian bungalow, 
in the upper part of which Madame Blavat- 
sky's private apartments were situated. The 
building contained what was called an occult 
room, which was especially fitted up for the 
production of Theosophical marvels. In the 
occult room was located the famous shrine, 
which consisted of an ordinary wooden cup- 
board built against the wall separating the 
room from Madame Blavatsky's bedchamber. 
The shrine was surrounded by a screen, in- 
tended to prevent any one from profaning it by 
approaching too near its sacred precincts. 

It was here that the famous " saucer phe- 
nomenon " occurred for the edification of Gen- 
eral Morgan. When visiting Madras, in 1883, 
during the absence of Colonel Olcott and 

42 



Madame Blavatsky. 

Madame Blavatsky in Europe, the General 
was privileged to visit the shrine, being con- 
ducted thither by Madame Coulomb, the assist- 
ant librarian of the society, who, in unlocking 
the shrine, allowed a saucer, which stood 
within, to fall out, apparently by accident, and 
break into fragments. Some one present sug- 
gested that the Mahatmas be requested to re- 
store the broken article. The pieces were 
thereupon placed in the shrine, which was se- 
curely locked. After the lapse of several min- 
utes, the shrine being unlocked, the saucer was 
found whole and perfect. This phenomenon 
made a deep impression on General Morgan, 
who wrote an enthusiastic account of it for 
the TJieosophist, the organ of the society. 

Dr. Richard Hodgson's investigation of 
this alleged phenomenon showed that it was 
due to the cunning ingenuity of Madame 
Blavatsky, instead of the occult powers of 
the Mahatmas. According to the confession 
of Madame Coulomb, the whole affair was 
prearranged, a pair of saucers having been 
bought on July 3, 1883, m a sno P m Madras, 
for two rupees eight annas each, the entry 
in the tradesman's account book showing 
the purchase on that date. A comparison of 
the fragments of the broken saucer with the 

43 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

one by which it had been replaced showed 
that they were undoubtedly duplicates, evi- 
dently coming from one stock. Some con- 
federate, initiated into the inner circle of The- 
osophical mysteries, and an adept in trickery 
rather than occultism, had introduced the 
duplicate saucer into the shrine through the 
secret panel in the rear from the bedchamber 
of the High Priestess. This was evidently 
done under the directions of Madame Bla- 
vatsky, as several of the letters subsequently 
given to the public through the Madras Chris- 
tian College Magazine, which were undoubt- 
edly written by the High Priestess, contain 
instructions for the fraudulent production of 
this phenomenon. Truly, this modern Priestess 
of Isis was rivaling her prototype of old who 
flourished on the banks of the Nile centuries 
ago. 

Another phenomenon attested by the ingen- 
uous Colonel Olcott was the miraculous pro- 
duction of a pair of vases in a locked cup- 
board. This cupboard was located in the oc- 
cult room, and contained a secret sliding panel 
in the back, of the existence of which the 
innocent Olcott was ignorant. The following 
is a brief history of this marvel, taken from 
contemporary records: — 

44 



Madame Blavatsky. 

Extract from Colonel Olcott's diary : 

" May 26th. Fine phenomenon. Got a pair 
of tortoise shell and lacquer vases with flow- 
ers, in a cabinet a moment before empty." 

Entry in account book of M. Faciobi & Co., 
Madras merchants, under date May 25th : 
" One pair flower vases, 7 rupees ; one pair 
flower vases, 6 rupees ; sent to Mrs. E. 
Coulomb." 

This phenomenon did not cost much. 

To recount all the marvels that occurred at 
the famous shrine for the edification of the 
faithful would exceed the limits of my lecture. 
Suffice it to say that scarcely a week passed 
but some new manifestation of occult power 
was witnessed, a common use of the shrine 
being for the despatch and receipt of Mahatma 
letters, the letters being placed in a receptacle 
therein and an answer being received after the 
lapse of a few minutes. 

We now approach the denouement of this 
drama — the culmination of this long series of 
impostures — the final act in which this High 
Priestess, attired in her gaudy robes and hold- 
ing aloft her magic wand, makes her exit be- 
hind the painted scenes of the stage upon 
which she had been so long walking with the 
imperial tread of a master mind. This is no 

45 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

mere figure of speech, for the career of this 
women is paralleled in audacity only by that of 
the notorious Cagliostro, and presents one of 
the most fascinating romances of modern times 
— abounding in thrilling incidents and dramatic 
situations. Bulwer Lytton's "Strange Story/' 
Rider Haggard's "She," and Stevenson's 
"Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" present no more 
weird situations and incidents than does the 
career of this remarkable woman. 

The Society for Psychical Research, 
founded in 1883 for the investigation, by scien- 
tific methods, of psychical phenomena, ap- 
pointed a committee in May, 1884, to investi- 
gate and report on the alleged Theosophical 
phenomena. This committee comprised seven 
of the ablest members of the society. The 
attitude of the society towards the alleged 
Theosophical phenomena was rather favorable 
than otherwise, for some of the phenomena, 
the reality of which the society had demon- 
strated by its investigations, bore some resem- 
blance to the Mahatma apparitions or astral 
projections. It was therefore with minds that 
were rather favorably disposed towards The- 
osophy that the committee undertook this 
inquiry. This must be conceded in justice to 
Dr. Hodgson and the gentlemen associated 

46 



Madame Blavatsky. 

with him on the committee, in answer to the 
charge of prejudice with which the Theoso- 
phists received the distinctly hostile report 
rendered necessary by the facts. The gentle- 
men on that committee were possessed of the 
highest intelligence, education and probity, 
and I believe were actuated, in their investiga- 
tion of Theosophical phenomena, entirely by 
devotion to truth. Let any disinterested per- 
son examine the evidence presented by that 
report and say whether their judgment is not 
sustained by the facts. Dr. Richard Hodgson 
was the person upon whom the Theosophists 
poured most of their vituperation. This was 
probably due to the fact that he was chiefly 
instrumental in dragging the frauds into the 
light of day, and unflinchingly publishing them 
to the world, regardless of Theosophical anath- 
emas. The Psychical Research Society com- 
mittee heard the statements of some of the 
leading Theosophists who claimed to bear wit- 
ness to these phenomena, among them Colonel 
Olcott, Mr. Sinnett and D. K. Mavalankar, a 
high caste Indian convert to Theosophy. 
Olcott told of the visit paid to him in the New 
York headquarters by the Mahatma, who left 
behind his materialized turban. This turban 
was exhibited to the wondering eyes of the 

47 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

committee, whose cross-examination elicited 
the important fact that Madame Blavatsky 
resided at the time under the same roof with 
Olcott. Mavalankar told of several flights 
made by himself in his astral body. 

The committee concluded to delegate Dr. 
Hodgson — a gentleman well qualified by edu- 
cation and nature for the work — to personally 
investigate the phenomena said to have oc- 
curred at the headquarters in India. Dr. 
Hodgson proceeded to India in November, 
1884, and remained there three months occu- 
pied in the investigation — interviewing numer- 
ous persons, visiting all the scenes of Theo- 
sophic miracles, gathering documents and 
consulting experts in handwriting — indefati- 
gable in his efforts at arriving at the truth. 

In September and October, 1884, and just 
before Dr. Hodgson's arrival in India, the 
Madras Christian College Magazine published 
a series of letters purporting to have been 
written by Madame Blavatsky to the Cou- 
lombs. These letters, if genuine, showed that 
Madame Blavatsky had been engaged in a 
conspiracy for the production, by fraudulent 
means, of Theosophical marvels. The letters 
contained instructions to the Coulombs for the 
production of these marvels, and were gener- 

48 



Madame Blavatsky. 

ally written in French, and had been turned 
over to the magazine by the Coulombs in a 
spirit of revenge for having been expelled 
from the society several months previously. 
They had been assistant librarian and corres- 
ponding secretary, respectively, for the Theo- 
sophical Society, and in these capacities had 
enjoyed special facilities for acting as confed- 
erates of Madame Blavatsky. Madame Bla- 
vatsky denounced the letters as forgeries 
concocted by the Christians to destroy the 
society. But the case against her does not 
rest entirely on the statements of the Cou- 
lombs. A careful examination by experts of 
the handwriting of the documents published 
by the Christian Magazine furnished striking 
proof that Madame Blavatsky was the author. 
Some of the documents were letters alleged to 
have been written by " Koot Hoomi," the 
mythical Mahatma who figured as one of the 
star actors in the Theosophical farce. The 
experts' opinion was that the letters, including 
those from " Koot Hoomi," or " Cute Hoomi," 
as he was dubbed by the wags, were written 
by Madame Blavatsky. A comparison of 
these documents with her admitted hand- 
writing showed striking similarities in spelling, 

49 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

idiom and writing that showed the ingenious 
workmanship of the High Priestess. 

When Dr. Hodgson reached Madras he found 
that the Theosophists had forestalled him by- 
demolishing the shrine ; but he was enabled, 
with the aid of witnesses, to reproduce it so as 
to present a diagram of it with his report. It 
was found that access to the shrine was ob- 
tained by a secret panel in Madame Blavatsky's 
bedroom, which was concealed behind a ward- 
robe, and was the channel through which the 
Mahatma letters were conveyed into the shrine, 
and other miracles performed. 

One of the favorite tricks by which Madame 
Blavatsky mystified her dupes of the Olcott 
species was by arranging with one of her con- 
federates to write her a letter and send it 
through the post on an appointed day, the 
Madame preserving a memorandum of its con- 
tents. On the day on which the letter was ex- 
pected to arrive, she contrived to have a crowd 
of people at her house, including persons that 
she desired, for reasons best known to herself, 
to convert to Theosophy. When the postman 
arrived and delivered the letter, the Madame, 
on the suggestion of some one present, would 
undertake to read the sealed letter by an exer- 
cise of occult power. This she did by placing 

50 



Madame Blavatsky. 

the letter in contact with her forehead and re- 
peating its contents. The phenomenon was 
completed by opening the letter and ascertain- 
ing its contents. Result, several new Theos- 
ophists. At times, I suppose, these Theo- 
sophical pyrotechnics, so carefully charged 
with "Karma," did not explode at the proper 
time — in other words, the arrival of the letter 
was miscalculated. But when the explosion 
did occur as arranged, there must have been a 
brilliant illumination. The lost powder was 
well spent in the dazzling display that followed 
the successful exhibitions. 

One word must be said in justice to Colonel 
Olcott. Dr. Hodgson's discoveries in connec- 
tion with the Theosophical frauds perpetrated 
by Madame Blavatsky showed that Colonel 
Olcott had been guilty of nothing worse than 
extraordinary credulity. He may have been a 
passive but innocent agent in that lady's hands, 
but none of the evidence showed anything more 
reprehensible. I understand that his faith in 
Theosophy remained unshaken by the expo- 
sures. 

I fear that it would occupy too much time — 
though I have no doubt the recital would prove 
interesting to you — to describe all the fraudu- 
lent methods and devices by which the High 

5i 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

Priestess and her confederates sought to prop- 
agate the new faith ; how, on one occasion Mr. 
Coulomb, with the aid of his serviceable dummy 
head, personated a Mahatma and appeared in 
the dim moonlight to Madame Blavatsky and 
a party of fellow-Theosophists who were sit- 
ting on the veranda at headquarters in Bom- 
bay. This same party of Theosophists, includ- 
ing the "psychological baby," Olcott, after- 
wards making a written statement certifying to 
the genuineness of the phenomenon — how the 
Madame tried to entrap a wealthy Englishman, 
resident in India, into making a large donation 
of money to the society — how the Englishman 
was anxious to believe in the existence of the 
Mahatmas, but begged the privilege of seeing 
one poor, little phenomenon — how the Madame 
telegraphed or wrote to the Coulombs direct- 
ing them to send a bogus telegram, signing to 
it the name of that celebrated myth " Koot 
Koomi," who figures almost as prominently in 
the Theosophical farce as did Mrs. Harris in 
the personal experiences of Sarah Gamp. Only 
one more thing was necessary to make the ex- 
posure of the Hierophant of Theosophy com- 
plete, and that was her confession, which was 
soon forthcoming. 

V. S. Solovyoff, a Russian journalist and 
52 



Madame Blavatsky. 

literary man, interested in psychic studies, made 
the acquaintance of Madame Blavatsky in May, 
1884, while she was in Paris, and was induced 
by the High Priestess to enroll himself as a 
member of the society. In August of the fol- 
lowing year, while on a visit to her at Wurz- 
burg, he made the discovery that led to her 
confession. In the course of a conversation 
with her she mentioned the name of a noted 
Adept, one who had attained a high degree of 
occult knowledge, and asked Solovyoff to get 
his photograph from a drawer in the room. 
Solovyoff, while rummaging through the 
drawer, found a package of Chinese envelopes 
which he had frequently seen enclosing Ma- 
hatma letters received by astral post. He 
charged her with fraud in connection with the 
astral letters. She at first strenuously denied, 
but finally, under pressure, admitted her guilt 
and justified herself on the ground that the 
only way to make an impression on men was 
by humbugging them, declaring, " in order to 
rule men it is necessary to deceive them ; 
almost invariably the more simple, the more 
silly, and the more gross the phenomenon, the 
more likely it is to succeed." She subse- 
quently wrote Solovyoff a letter, in which she 
confessed that all the Theosophical phenom- 

53 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

ena, in the production of which she was con- 
cerned, were produced by trickery. 

Madame Blavatsky died in London in 1891. 
Her body was cremated with mystic rites and 
the ashes were divided into three parts — one 
being buried in London, one being sent to 
New York and the other to Madras, India. 
Thus the new and old world, between which 
her activity in life had been divided, shared the 
honor of her last resting place. 

One of the humorous incidents connected 
with the Theosophical movement was the 
claim put forward, after the death of Madame 
Blavatsky, by Mrs. Catherine Tingley, a well- 
known Theosophist, to be a re-incarnation of 
the dead High Priestess. The utter absurdity 
of the pretension did not prevent her from 
securing a large number of followers among 
the Theosophists, while by others the claim 
was treated with ridicule. The difference 
caused a split between the English and Amer- 
ican branches of the society, and the contro- 
versy became so heated as to threaten the 
existence of the society. 

One of the most remarkable incidents con- 
nected with the Theosophical movement was 
the conversion of Annie Besant. Mrs. Besant 
obtained considerable publicity some years ago 

54 



Madame Blavatsky. 

by her association with Charles Bradlaugh in 
his conflict with the English law authorities in 
the attempt to circulate the book known as the 
" Fruits of Philosophy." This work advocated 
prudential checks on population, and aroused 
a storm of protest from the conventionally 
respectable and orthodox. During the popu- 
lar tempest that arose, Mrs. Besant stood by 
Bradlaugh with a heroic courage worthy of a 
better cause. She now passed from a mate- 
rialism that saw neither God nor soul in the 
universe to the fantastic speculations of a sys- 
tem of philosophy that filled all nature with 
spirits and hobgoblins. She became an ardent 
Theosophist and a blind worshiper of its 
Hierophant. At one bound she passed from 
rationalism to supernaturalism — from science 
to superstition. After worshiping at the feet 
of such intellectual giants as Darwin and Her- 
bert Spencer, she prostrated herself at the feet 
of such a clay idol as. Madame Blavatsky. 
Such mental transformations are rare, and pre- 
sent an interesting study in the psychology of 
belief. 

The defenders of Madame Blavatsky say 
that Theosophy must not be judged by the 
character of its founder — that even if she is 
admitted to have been an impostor, the system 

55 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

of philosophy given to the world by Theosophy 
is not affected thereby. We must concede that 
there is some show of justice in this. The dis- 
covery of the law of gravitation is not affected 
by Newton's character. But when we find that 
the founder of a new religion or system of 
philosophy has been guilty of the grossest 
frauds in the promulgation of that religion or 
philosophy, we certainly are justified in dis- 
trusting the honesty and sincerity of her 
motives. What would the Christian think of 
the " Lord's Prayer " or the "Sermon on the 
Mount," if the miracles Jesus is alleged to 
have performed could be demonstrated to have 
been juggling tricks. They certainly would no 
longer appeal so powerfully to the hearts of 
Christians. So with Madame Blavatsky. 
Having been convicted of the grossest frauds 
in connection with the phenomena of Theos- 
ophy, our confidence and respect for the relig- 
ious and philosophical principles promulgated 
by her are lessened, if not lost. At all events, 
that, I think, will be the judgment of the world. 
Frank Podmore, in discussing this subject, sums 
up the matter by declaring, " that the phenom- 
ena of Theosophy were concocted to float its 
philosophy." 

In my humble judgment Madame Blavatsky 
56 



Madame Blavatsky. 

was a charlatan — a charlatan in her pretensions 
to occult power — a charlatan in her pretensions 
to intercourse with the so-called Mahatmas — 
a charlatan in her literary pretensions. 

With all their boasted superhuman wisdom, 
what have the Mahatmas ever done to advance 
human welfare? Did a Mahatma ever invent 
a telephone — give us a steam engine — tell us 
how to lighten human toil, or how to cure a 
single disease ? Did one of these gentlemen 
ever tell us how to avert a famine in India, or 
how to save or prolong a single human life? 
No, they employ their spare time in restoring 
broken saucers, in projecting their astral bodies 
where they are not wanted, or in miraculously 
transmitting to a distance letters rilled with 
Theosophical twaddle. They give us a minute 
description of "Kama Loca " and " Deva- 
chan " and other regions inaccessible to our 
poor mortal vision, but not one word of prac- 
tical benefit to mankind. 

Theosophy, like the philosophy of ancient 
Greece and Rome, has been fruitful in high- 
sounding words, but barren of practical bene- 
fits to mankind. Are we to throw aside our 
noble Western science, with its grand heritage 
of benefits achieved, for that wordy and barren 
philosophy that promises much but gives little 

57 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

else than high-sounding words? Shall we de- 
sert that grand trinity of intellects — Darwin, 
Spencer and Huxley, for a nineteenth century 
Cagliostro? Shall we exchange evolution and 
the grand teachings of science for the wild 
jargon of " Isis Unveiled?" Shall we cast 
aside the study of chemistry for the mum- 
meries of alchemy and exchange the noble 
science of astronomy for the rant of astrology ? 
Shall we explore the Heavens for horoscopes 
or for new stars ? Shall we pursue those will- 
o'-the-wisps, the "Philosopher's Stone" and 
the " Elixir of Life," or follow the beacon light 
of reason and science ? 

While I am unable to accept the philosophy 
of Theosophy, and believe that its so-called 
phenomena rest largely, if not entirely, on 
fraud, I have only the highest admiration for 
the lofty morality inculcated by it. There can 
be no grander consummation than the union of 
all mankind in one grand brotherhood — all dis- 
tinctions of race, creed and color obliterated, 
governed only by the simple but sublime mo- 
rality of the Golden Rule, all striving for the 
abolition of crime, war and disease and uniting 
in the grand effort to realize here in this world 
the heaven of which poet, priest and philoso- 

53 



Madame Blavatsky. 

pher have dreamed in all the ages of the past. 
I believe we are little by little approaching that 
grand consummation. And we need not the 
inspiration of the prophet to assure us of this ; 
for science also holds out to us this promise, 
and already we see painted on the horizon of 
the Twentieth Century the golden dawning of 
a grander era. Just as surely as man has as- 
cended step by step from lower forms of life, 
passing through all the gradations of organic 
evolution, always struggling higher and higher 
in the ascending scale, till the man of to-day, 
with all his marvelous powers and God-like 
attributes, has been reached, just so surely will 
that progress continue till a moral, physical and 
intellectual perfection is reached of which every 
previous step in the long and bloody struggle 
of the past was but a prophecy. 

Every fossil record testifying to the bloody 
struggle for existence in those primeval times 
when man had not yet emerged from brute- 
dom ; every transition from lower to higher life 
marked by each geological epoch ; every ad- 
vance made by man in his conflict with the 
hostile forces of his environment ; every dis- 
covery and invention by which man's empire 
over nature has been extended and his condi- 

59 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

tion ameliorated ; every martyr's life sacrificed 
to truth, justice and right ; every flower strug- 
gling to reach the sunlight and every human 
soul aspiring towards a higher ideal, has been 
an eloquent prophecy of the time when the 
world will be ruled by love, reason and justice. 

60 



PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

AND 

A FUTURE LIFE. 



The tendency of modern scientific thought 
is distinctly materialistic ; all the phenomena 
of the universe being interpreted by it in terms 
of matter and force. The profoundest thoughts 
of the philosopher, the highest emotions of the 
poet, painter and musician are reduced by the 
cold speculations of materialistic science to 
molecular action in the substance of the brain. 
Even the soul of man, for whose possession 
angels and demons are said to be eternally 
contending, is made to depend upon the main- 
tenance of the functions of the physical body 
— a diseased brain producing a diseased mind, 
or soul, if you will. 

A small quantity of cocaine will produce an 
abnormal exaltation of the mental faculties, 
while softening of the brain is accompanied by 
a corresponding mental deterioration. Quick- 
ened action of the heart and circulation, up to 
a certain point, is followed by increased mental 
action, while decreased action of the heart is 

61 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

followed by mental lethargy ; and cessation of 
the heart's action, if continued long enough, is 
followed by cessation of consciousness. These 
facts are interpreted by the materialistic scien- 
tist as indicating the absolute dependence of 
the mind on the brain — every mental process 
being said to involve a corresponding physical 
process. This crude form of materialism finds 
expression in the terse formula of Biichner, 
"Ohne Phosphor Kein Gedanke" — without 
phosphorus no thought. It is the boast of the 
materialist that the scalpel of the anatomist 
does not reveal the existence of a soul, and 
that in this physical realm, at least, no evidence 
has been found of human consciousness sur- 
viving the tomb. We are further reminded by 
the materialist that the infant, when it comes 
into the world, has scarcely any mind — in fact, 
is said to be more helpless, mentally as well as 
physically, than any animal — the animal being 
guided and protected by its inherited instincts, 
of which man has scarcely any. The child's 
mind comes in contact with its environment 
and immediately begins to acquire knowledge. 
At first it is unable to adjust its simplest move- 
ments to surrounding objects. As its brain 
grows, and its experience broadens, there is a 
corresponding development of the mind, which 

62 



Psychical Research and a Future Life. 

continues until the maturity of its powers is 
attained. Then comes physical decay, which 
is accompanied by more or less waning of the 
mental powers. Finally comes physical disso- 
lution. What then becomes of the mind ? We 
had no knowledge of it before its embodiment 
in that particular organism — has it survived the 
dissolution of that organism? Has it kept 
pace with the growth of the body and shared 
in all of its changes and yet sitrvives the de- 
struction of that body ? From the standpoint 
of the materialist the presumption seems to be 
against this conclusion. 

The materialist attempts to reinforce his po- 
sition by appealing to Darwinism, according to 
which man's mind has been derived by a slow 
process of evolution through countless ages, 
during which the struggle for existence held 
ruthless sway, from the lowest forms of animal 
life, and ultimately from that mysterious sub- 
stance called protoplasm. At what stage in 
organic evolution did the soul of man make its 
appearance, triumphantly ask our materialistic 
philosophers. 

It is to be noted, however, that Darwin him- 
self, as shown by his published letters, did not 
regard his theory of man's descent from lower 
forms of animal life as being wholly incompat- 

63 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

ible with the belief in the existence and im- 
mortality of the soul; while John Fiske, one of 
the ablest living exponents of the theory of 
evolution, seems to regard that theory as 
strengthening the evidences of man's survival. 
Fiske thinks that the Power, by whatever 
name you may designate it — "Jehovah, Jove, 
or Lord," or Herbert Spencer's "Unknow- 
able," the God of Agnosticism — which has de- 
veloped man from a speck of formless proto- 
plasm, is equal to the task of producing that 
crowning work of evolution — a human soul. 

While the charge that science is materialis- 
tic, is, I think, true, the facts advanced by 
materialists in support of their view are purely 
negative in their character. The presumption, 
however, raised by those facts seems almost 
overwhelming. It might reasonably be said 
that if a thing or fact exists, the most ex- 
haustive search of science aided by all the in- 
struments devised by it ought to reveal its 
existence. But here we are met by the counter 
statement that we are limited by our experi- 
ence, and as our experience is not coextensive 
with the universe, there may be modes of ex- 
istence and facts beyond our limited ken. In 
other words, the possibilities of nature are 
limitless. If the child before it was born 

64 



Psychical Research and a Future Life. 

were capable of reasoning, it would probably 
find it hard to believe that the time would come 
when it would be transferred to another state 
of existence where it could live almost inde- 
pendently of its mother. Reasoning from its 
limited experience, it would conclude that itself 
and mother were inseparably connected. I use 
this analogy to illustrate the inconclusiveness 
of negative evidence. Why, we are surrounded 
by forms of life too minute to be discovered 
without the aid of a microscope — there are at- 
mospheric undulations so rapid that the un- 
aided ear cannot translate them into sound — 
vibrations of light so rapid as to escape the 
eye. On every side we are met by the fact 
that our senses are but imperfect channels of 
communication with the mind — that we do not, 
can not, know the most infinitesimal fraction of 
what is actually going on around us in this 
marvelous universe. And yet the main fact re- 
lied upon by materialism is the absence of direct 
evidence — is entirely negative in its character. 
We attempt to gauge the possibilities of nature 
by our limited experience. It seems to me 
that the proper attitude of science should be 
agnostic, saying, " I do not know, but am will- 
ing to learn." 

Plato, in the " Book of the Republic," illus- 

65 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

trates, by analogy, the mistaken impressions un- 
der which we may labor regarding the material 
world and our position therein. He supposes 
the existence of a cave somewhere in the world 
in which prisoners have been confined from 
earliest infancy. From their position in the 
cave they are unable to see the outside world. 
Over and behind the prisoners burns a great 
fire. Between the prisoners and the fire, but 
out of sight of the former, people are constantly 
passing to and fro. The shadows of the people 
are cast on the walls of the cave and are seen 
by the prisoners, who mistake them for the 
reality. The application of this is readily seen. 
We may be like these prisoners, confined in 
this cave of a material world, in which we mis- 
take the things seen by our limited vision for 
the reality — the shadows for the substance. 

And what, after all, has been the history of 
scientific discovery. What is classed as impos- 
sible to-day is demonstrated to be possible to- 
morrow. We are constantly revising our 
theories in the light of later and fuller experi- 
ence. The marvels of yesterday have become 
the commonplaces of to-day. Can it be said 
that the declarations of science on any subject 
are final, authoritative, infallible? We are more 
and more impressed by the truth and modesty 

66 



Psychical Research and a Future Life. 

of Sir Isaac Newton's statement uttered when 
about to die : " I feel like a little child picking 
up pebbles on the sea shore, while the great 
ocean of truth lies unexplored before me." 

It may be stated that theology has failed to 
advance any evidence of man's continued ex- 
istence beyond the grave that appeals to the 
rationalism of to-day; hence the prevalence, 
even in the church, of avowed unbelief in a fu- 
ture existence. Question any of your acquaint- 
ances on the subject, and you will be surprised 
by the number of persons professing belief in 
religion who avow such an unbelief. The com- 
mon thought of the day seems to bear the 
same relation to religion that it did in France 
in the latter part of the eighteenth century to 
the French Monarchy. On the surface there 
appears to be belief in religion, but under that 
surface of seeming belief is profound unbelief, 
which will require some great crisis to make 
manifest. The French Revolution of 1789 was 
the crisis which showed how shallow was the 
loyalty that supported the monarchy. 

The ministry, I believe, is thoroughly per- 
meated by this spirit of skepticism, and the 
Pulpit to-day is producing its Robert Elsmeres 
in every great city. Men who have the moral 
courage to speak out, who refuse to bow in 

67 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

abject submission to the dogmas of the Church 
and sacrifice on the altar of superstition their 
intellectual manhood. Men who value intel- 
lectual honesty more than social prestige or 
financial success. These men honestly en- 
deavor to reconcile dogma with truth ; but if 
they find this impossible, the dogma must go. 
Cincinnati is proud to claim one at least of 
these fearless men who is a shining light to 
the clergy of this city. He has left the fogs 
and mists of the valley of superstition and 
climbed to the mountain top of intellectual 
freedom. Are these men doing any good ? 
I think they are doing more good to the 
cause of free thought than we are. They 
reach a class of people by their thought who 
would not come to hear us, for fear of busi- 
ness ruin or social ostracism. These minis- 
ters can not always be as radical in their 
pulpit utterances as they would desire, but, 
like that wise and practical statesman, Abra- 
ham Lincoln, they are compelled to com- 
promise to some extent in order to achieve 
some measure of success. They are not like 
the noble William Lloyd Garrison, who, in 
his deadly and uncompromising crusade 
against human slavery declared that he would 
not enter into a covenant with Hell, and reso- 

68 



Psychical Research and a Future Life. 

lutely refused to make any concessions to the 
slave power, but demanded its unconditional 
abolition. We should not condemn them for 
not ofoing; far enough with us on the road of 
truth, but should give them sympathy and 
encouragement. 

To return from my digression, Christianity 
appeals to the alleged physical resurrection 
of Christ, which is supposed to have occurred 
nineteen hundred years ago, under conditions 
that make its acceptance by the unprejudiced 
a matter of some difficulty, and to a few vague 
and equivocal promises contained in the New 
Testament, as a basis for its doctrine of a 
future existence. This may have satisfied in 
the days when unreasoning faith held sway, 
but to-day, when the tendency is to bring all 
beliefs to the test of fact and logic, something 
that appeals to the senses and reason is de- 
manded. The tales of beautiful fairies and 
angels with wings like birds (for how could 
they navigate through the air without wings) 
were very beautiful and real to the child, but 
can the full-srown man or woman still con- 
tinue to nourish his mind on them. There 
comes a time to the human race, as well as 
to the individual, when fairies and angels, and 
I might add other religious myths, cease to 

69 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

satisfy the mind, and hard, cold facts are de- 
manded. There comes a time when the child 
begins to ask awkward questions about the 
fairies and angels, and these incongruous im- 
ages fade forever from the imagination, the 
age of faith disappears, and the age of reason 
dawns. They were pleasing illusions, no 
doubt, but man can not walk on crutches and 
be held in leading strings forever. The laws 
of human progress forbid ! 

There are some who say, " what was good 
enough for my father, grandfather and great- 
great grandfather ought to be good enough 
for me." What modesty, what fine argument! 
This reasoning, if carried to its logical con- 
clusions, would stop the wheels of progress 
and turn back the hands of time. We would 
still be riding in stage coaches, grinding corn 
with a stone, threshing wheat with a flail, 
plowing with a stick and reaping with a sickle. 
Our great grandfathers did all these things. 
Why not we ? Why not cure disease by in- 
cantations and charms, determine guilt or in- 
nocence by ordeal? Why not reduce the 
science of jurisprudence to the mummeries of 
savages, and the noble science of medicine to 
the gibberish of alchemy? Why not protect 
our houses with crosses instead of lightning 

70 



Psychical Research and a Future Life. 

rods? Why not insure ourselves against 
danger and death by carrying amulets instead 
of insurance policies ? Our venerated fore- 
fathers, in whose footsteps we are invited to 
tread, did these and many other wise things. 
Doubt begets inquiry — inquiry, knowledge — 
knowledge, progress. Knowledge is the pro- 
duct of doubt and investigation — ignorance, the 
result of unquestioning credulity. 

The doubters, the heretics of the past, were 
the heralds of progress and made possible the 
mental pioneers of to-day. This is a thor- 
oughly rationalistic age — anything that can not 
stand the scrutiny of reason must fall. 

The proof of a future existence which the- 
ology has confessedly failed to furnish, what 
is known as modern Spiritualism, has under- 
taken to produce. This movement, from its 
inception at Hydeville in 1848, has been ban- 
ned by both science and theology, by both 
the learned and unlearned. The movement 
soon became surrounded by such a vast mass 
of fraud, credulity and immorality that it fell 
completely into disrepute, from which it has 
not yet emerged. The subject, strange to say, 
seemed to have the power of introducing dis- 
cord in every family into which it entered, of 
arraying husband against wife in the Divorce 

71 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

Court, and of producing all manner of do- 
mestic infelicity and sexual irregularities. This 
is a rather strange result of a belief that 
teaches that we are surrounded by the spirits 
of our beloved dead who see all we do. 

Medium became the synonym of impostor 
and the dark seance the scene of all manner of 
dark deeds. Here was afforded a splendid 
field for the mercenary. Professional mediums 
sprang up everywhere and carried on a lucra- 
tive business. The fraudulent medium did not 
require much skill in trickery, as the credulity 
of the average Spiritualist was so excessive 
that he was ready to ascribe any and every- 
thing to ghostly agency. No amount of evi- 
dence of fraud could stagger the belief of the 
Spiritualist, his was a case of hopeless mental 
aberration on the subject. Like the Christian 
anchorites of old, who, by constant fasting and 
mortification of the body, became possessed by 
the delusion that they were constantly sur- 
rounded by demons who sought by every 
means to tempt them to some act of sin, so the 
Spiritualist saw in the most trivial occurrences 
of every-day life the action of spirits, and daily 
consulted his favorite medium, as did the 
Greeks of old their oracles. And the answers 
received were equally oracular — that is, am- 

72 



Psychical Research and a Future Life. 

biguous, and framed in such general terms as 
to fit any case. The lucky hits would be called 
"remarkable tests." The assertion, attributed, 
I believe, to Prof. Tyndall, that some chimpan- 
zees could reason better than the average 
Spiritualist, seemed to be justified. The evi- 
dence of the average Spiritualist as to what 
occurs at these seances is absolutely worthless, 
as his attitude and frame of mind are such as 
to prevent him from seeing what actually oc- 
curs. He may be honest, probably is, but his 
credulity is such as to make him guilty of the 
grossest mal-observation. 

Some twelve years ago, learning that the 
well-known slate writing medium, Charles 
Watkins, was about to visit Cincinnati, and 
having read an account of experiments per- 
formed by him in the presence of Rev. Joseph 
Cook and others, and said to have been very 
startling in their character, I determined to see 
him. I do not know that this Watkins was the 
man with whom Rev. Joseph Cook made the 
experiments — I only know he claimed to be 
such. While the Rev. Joseph Cook had his 
prejudices against religious liberals, I do not 
think he was prepossessed in favor of Spirit- 
ualism, but observed the experiment closely 
and endeavored to report it honestly. I called 

73 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

on Watkins when he arrived at the Palace 
Hotel, and arranged for a sitting for the follow- 
ing day. When I called the next day, I found 
a well-known business man of Cincinnati ac- 
companied by a friend who were also there for 
a sitting-. While waiting- for Watkins, who was 
momentarily engaged, I entered into conver- 
sation with the business man before mentioned. 
He informed me that he had had a sitting on 
the previous day with Watkins, and stated 
that the manifestations were wonderful — that 
he had obtained writing on a slate purchased by 
himself — which never left his possession, and 
while the slate was jointly held by himself and 
Watkins — in fact, the process of writing was 
visible to his eyes. My informant being a 
sharp business man, I naturally attached some 
weight to this statement, but, as my narrative 
will disclose, he was utterly incapable of ac- 
curately observing a simple occurrence and 
correctly reporting it. Watkins finally made 
his appearance, but was at a loss to know to 
whom he should give the first sitting. To solve 
the difficulty he consulted the "spirits." The 
spirits who gave the information must have 
been evil ones, for, unfortunately for the me- 
dium, they selected me — the business man and 
his friend being requested to leave the room, 

74 



Psychical Research and a Future Life. 

which they accordingly did. The medium fur- 
nished me with some slips of paper, requesting 
me to write the names of deceased relatives 
thereon, while he left the room. I did not like 
this, but complied. Having written the names 
and rolled the slips into pellets, I was requested 
to place them together on the table and con- 
centrate my attention on them. I found it 
difficult to watch the pellets and the medium 
at the same time, and I think Watkins managed 
to read a pellet while pretending to place it in 
contact with his forehead, and while my at- 
tention was momentarily withdrawn from him. 
He then took up the slate brought by me and 
seated himself at the table opposite to me. 
Placing a pencil in his right hand, the arm 
soon moved and wrote automatically — that is, 
apparently so. The slate was held so that I 
could not see the writing. At the conclusion 
of the writing, the medium rose from the table 
and going to the window read aloud the mes- 
sage supposed to be written on the slate, after 
which, taking a rag rubbed vigorously over the 
surface of the slate, as if effacing the message. 
He then placed the slate on top of another of 
the same size, and requested me to assist in 
holding the slates under the table. Scratching, 
resembling the sound of writing being heard, 

75 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

I dropped my eye on Watkins' wrist and de- 
tected the movement of the cords in his wrist, 
indicating that his index finger was doing the 
scratching. The writing ceasing, and the slate 
being withdrawn, I was puzzled on seeing a 
nicely written message. Only for a moment 
was I puzzled, then the trick flashed on my 
mind. The medium had deliberately written 
the message while he sat opposite me and had 
only pretended to wipe it out, as was clearly 
evidenced by a long streak across the lower 
part of the signature, produced by the rag 
with which the wiping was done, coming acci- 
dentally in contact with the same. When 
charged with the fraud he virtually confessed 
by offering me a roll of money which I de- 
clined. This was the wonderful thing- witnessed 
by the business man, a simple trick which his 
credulity prevented him from detecting. This 
experience illustrates the value of the evidence 
of the average Spiritualist. I intend no re- 
flection on his motives or character in this 
statement. 

This business man was above the average in 
intelligence, and in his particular business it 
would be a hard matter to fool him — yet his 
mind was so thoroughly prepossessed by 
Spiritualism and "intense expectation," that 

76 



Psychical Research and a Future Life. 

he readily attributed everything done by a per- 
son claiming to be a medium, to spiritual 
agency. To reason with him would, as Paine 
would say, be like giving medicine to the dead. 
What is the testimony of such persons worth 
as to the genuineness of spiritual phenomena 
— absolutely nothing. They do not see what 
actually occurs, but only what they expect to 
see, and a little cross-examination would con- 
vert the marvels they relate into very ordi- 
nary sleight-of-hand tricks. Does any un- 
prejudiced person wonder that such books as 
"The Bottom Facts of Spiritualism," which 
purports to give the author's very interesting 
experiences with fraudulent mediums, and 
"The Undiscovered Country," a satire on 
Spiritualism, should be written and widely 
read, when the Spiritualists themselves furnish 
the material ? 

Spiritualists themselves are responsible for 
a good deal of the odium attached to their 
belief. They give shelter and comfort to and 
countenance in every manner — in fact make 
martyrs out of them when they are caught 
— all the fraudulent mediums who prey upon 
the credulity of the public. Their societies, 
instead of having committees of capable per- 
sons to investigate all mediums who sit for 

77 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

the public and expose them if fraudulent — 
actually issue certificates to them as ministers, 
thus enabling them to carry on their business 
under the cloak of religion and avoid the pay- 
ment of a license fee. Let the society of 
Spiritualists — if there is still one — appoint a 
committee of one and make Mr. Wilms chair- 
man, and I predict the ghosts that perform 
with horns and various other paraphernalia 
in the dark circles of certain mediums in this 
city, will be on the run in very short order. 

My remarks regarding Spiritualism may ap- 
pear harsh to some of my audience, but re- 
member that when the impurities have accum- 
ulated in the blood of an individual until his 
health is threatened, the first thing to be done 
to place him on the road to recovery is to 
purge him — so with Spiritualism, when it has 
been purged of its fraudulent mediums, it will 
be placed on a fair road to recovery and pub- 
lic recognition. 

Having said this much against the dark 
features of Spiritualism, it is only fair to say 
that while Spiritualism may be a weed, as 
John Fiske declares, or what Tyndall coarsely 
characterizes as "intellectual whoredom," 
nevertheless, beneath a vast mass of fraud 
and delusion, there is a grain of truth. It is 

78 



Psychical Research and a Future Life. 

strange, to use a common metaphor, that there 
should be so much smoke without some fire. 
Those who are committed to the doctrine of 
materialism may be unwilling to admit it, and 
those who see in Spiritualism only a weed, 
may smile incredulously and in a superior 
way, but let us face the question fearlessly 
and in a spirit equally far removed from un- 
reasoning credulity and uncompromising hos- 
tility. It ill becomes scientific men to treat 
with hostility and contempt any subject, how- 
ever unpopular it may be, in view of the mar- 
tyrdom its own devotees have suffered in the 
past at the hands of the Church. No person 
who has carefully and dispassionately read 
the experiments made by Professor William 
Crookes, F. R. S., with D. D. Home, and de- 
scribed in " Researches in Spiritualism," or 
Count Agenor de Gasparin's " Des Tables 
Tournantes," or the report of the committee 
appointed by the Dialectical Society of Lon- 
don, to investigate this subject, will question 
the existence of that grain of truth. The 
grain of truth to which I allude is the move- 
ment of ponderable objects without physical 
contact, such movement displaying intelligence. 
If any fact of science can be said to be estab- 
lished, this fact is established beyond all con- 

79 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

troversy. If the evidence supporting this fact 
is rejected as insufficient, then all human testi- 
mony is worthless. The fact so established is 
a psychic fact, so far as it implies a force in 
some way connected with the minds or intelli- 
gences of the experimenters. Whether it is 
an embodied or disembodied intelligence, is an 
open question. Sergeant Cox, an eminent 
English lawyer in his day, who carefully inves- 
tigated this class of phenomena through D. D. 
Home, with whom he sustained intimate social 
relations, at first advanced the theory in his 
works, "Spiritualism Answered by Science," 
and "The Mechanism of Man," that the force 
emanated from the bodies of the experimenters, 
and that the intelligence exhibited was their 
intelligence. Finding this hypothesis inade- 
quate to account for the facts, he was driven by 
those facts to suppose the existence of an in- 
ferior order of intelligent beings surrounding 
man who did these things, and who represented 
themselves as the spirits of our deceased friends. 
But later in life, he accepted the Spiritualistic 
explanation. I need only refer to the experi- 
ence of Alfred Russell Wallace, who discovered 
and gave to the world, simultaneously with 
Charles Darwin, the generalization known in 
organic evolution as the "Survival of the Fit- 

80 



Psychical Research and a Future Life. 

test," or " Natural Selection," which plays such 
an important part in the development of man 
and animal. Perhaps some one may say that 
great as well as ordinary men are subject to 
delusions ; but is this not begging the question ? 
It may also be suggested that on this subject 
no man can be expected to accept the opinion 
of another, however eminent in science he may 
be. But surely the experiments ought to 
stand, and the results, the same as experi- 
ments in other fields of scientific research. 
Otherwise no one but the person actually con- 
ducting the experiments would ever know any- 
thing definite regarding them. That the fact 
appears to contradict our experience is not 
conclusive against it. How about that well- 
known tropical chief who expressed great in- 
credulity on being informed that in some parts 
of the world water becomes a solid mass? 
How about that latest marvel of science, liquid 
air, which seems to contradict all our notions 
of heat and cold? 

The latest developments in psychic research 
tend to discredit the materialism represented 
by such thinkers as Biichner and Moleschott, 
by showing the action of the human mind at 
a distance from the body, if not independently 
of the body. The Society for Psychical Re- 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

search of London, the organization of which 
was suggested by the experiments of such men 
as Crookes, Wallace and Zollner, but par- 
ticularly by those of the committee appointed 
by the Dialectical Society of London, has pub- 
lished thirteen volumes of its "Proceedings" at 
the rate of one each year, covering the whole 
field of psychical research, and thus bringing 
into the field of legitimate scientific investiga- 
tion a subject heretofore handled only by char- 
latans and sensation mongers. 

The membership of the society is extensive, 
and contains the names of the persons most 
eminent in science, politics, literature and pro- 
fessional life in England, America, Germany 
and France. 

Those names alone are a guarantee of hon- 
esty, sobriety of judgment, accuracy, and the 
possession of every quality necessary to com- 
mand the respect of the world. The method 
by which the society prosecutes its investiga- 
tions is by appointing committees of its mem- 
bers, each of which is entrusted with some 
special branch of inquiry, such for instance as 
" Hypnotism," " Hallucinations," so-called 
"Spiritualistic Phenomena," etc. These com- 
mittees make written reports embodying the 
results of their investigations, and these re- 

82 



Psychical Research and a Future Life. 

ports make up the bulk of the thirteen volumes of 
"Proceedings" issued by the society up to date. 
The work of this society, since its organization 
in 1882, has attracted wide attention owing to 
its distinguished and numerous membership 
and the scientific methods employed by it. In 
reading the reports of the committees, as well 
as the dissertations thereon by such able mem- 
bers as F. W. H. Myers, Edmund Gurney and 
Frank Podmore, one is constantly struck and 
impressed by the cold, dispassionate analysis 
of the facts, and the resolute avoidance of any- 
thing like sentiment or emotion in arriving at 
conclusions, that characterize all the work. 
Reason sits on the judgment seat, and the 
passionate pleadings of the heart and emotions 
are unheard and unavailing. All known natural 
laws are applied in attempted explanation of 
the facts before it is attempted to formulate 
new ones. Hence it was only after failure to 
explain by known laws of Psychology or 
Physics a large class of the phenomena ob- 
served, that the theory of telepathy was ad- 
vanced. Telepathy, which means ability of one 
mind to impress or be impressed by another 
mind otherwise than through the recognized 
channels of the senses — or in a narrower sense, 

83 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

thought-transference — is not entirely new, hav- 
ing been advanced before. 

But the Society for Psychical Research is 
entitled to the credit of having collected the 
evidence and formulated the theory on a scien- 
tific basis as Charles Darwin did the theory of 
organic evolution, which had also been given 
to the world before his time by Lamarck and 
the authors of "Vestiges of Creation." To 
commence with, as a foundation, the society 
secured an experimental basis for the theory, 
which was arrived at in the following manner. 
A person was selected, who, there was reason 
to believe, was peculiarly susceptible to tele- 
pathic impressions. The subject so selected — 
being called for convenience the percipient — 
was first carefully blindfolded. A diagram or 
drawing of some peculiar character was then 
made on a paper by a member of the com- 
mittee, after which all the members thereof 
concentrated their minds on the drawing for a 
short space of time, when the bandage was re- 
moved and the drawing reproduced by the 
percipient or subject. The number of cases in 
which the drawing was correctly reproduced 
was so remarkable as to exclude all idea of 
chance or oruessino- — in fact, these were ex- 
eluded by a mathematical calculation of 

84 



Psychical Research and a Future Life. 

chances. The same experiments were made 
with color and taste, with like results. 

The society's committee on " Phantasms of 
the Living" — under which heading is included 
not only apparitions but telepathic impressions 
of the eye, ear and touch — has collected a num- 
ber of cases of persons transferring their feel- 
ings, emotions, sensations, and even their own 
apparitions to the minds of persons at a dis- 
tance. These cases are classed as experi- 
mental, as the impression or apparition was 
projected or transferred by a conscious exer- 
cise of the will power. The committee having 
charge of the subject " Phantasms of the Liv- 
ing," cite several cases of persons projecting 
a semblance of themselves to quite a distance, 
which is distinctly seen. In these cases the 
person whose phantasm is seen, is in a semi- 
conscious or unconscious state and has no 
recollection of what occurred. They also cite 
the case of a person who on a certain day 
" willed" that a certain person should remove 
a picture from her parlor wall, which inquiry 
showed that she did at that time. These and 
many others of a like general character are 
claimed as experimental, being produced by 
an exercise of volition. The largest class of 
cases are what are termed "spontaneous." 

85 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

As where, for instance, a lady is awakened 
in the morning by the sensation of being vio- 
lently struck in the mouth by some physical 
object, but could find nothing. Her husband, 
who was away, on returning, told her that 
he had at that very time met with an acci- 
dent at sea by being struck in the mouth. 
Cases are cited of persons who hear them- 
selves called by name by a voice which is 
recognized, and subsequently learn that at 
that very time that person, who was at a dis- 
tance, died. Drowning persons and persons 
passing through some crisis of life project im- 
pressions to distant friends or relatives (this 
is done unconsciously) that reach the per- 
cipients as a voice, touch or human semblance. 
All this the committee of the Psychical Re- 
search Society calls telepathy. But what is 
telepathy, you may ask, that being only a 
word. Explain the telepathic process. Is the 
impression transmitted by a physical vehicle ? 
When that point in the inquiry is reached, I 
fear we are entering the domain of meta- 
physics or the unknowable. 

All that the Psychical Research Society has 
tried to do is to collect the cases and corre- 
late them — draw the generalization called telep- 
athy. We see the facts always occurring in 

86 



Psychical Research and a Future Life. 

a certain order, sequence or relation, and draw 
the conclusion that they are in some way re- 
lated. That is all the law of gravitation does. 
Phenomena are observed and explained by 
supposing the operation of a force called grav- 
itation. Telepathy is established in the same 
way. We do not know why or how a load- 
stone attracts steel ; all we know is the bare 
fact of attraction. When we try to get be- 
yond this, we are met by the problem that 
confronts us in every inquiry — what is a thing 
in its final analysis? 

The cases mentioned will probably call up 
a smile of incredulity, but they are supported 
by such an array of evidence as to make 
their rejection by the unprejudiced a matter 
of some difficulty. Always bearing in mind 
that the marvels that physical science is daily 
producing, would have been pronounced with 
equal positiveness, as antecedently improb- 
able. Some phenomena are exceedingly rare, 
but they occur nevertheless when the proper 
conditions obtain. 

Comets, at one time, were deemed super- 
natural. Until eyeless fishes were found in 
the Mammoth Cave, it was confidently asserted 
that there were none such. I am not endeav- 
oring to make out a case in favor of these oc- 

87 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

currences for the purpose of bolstering up the 
argument for the immortality of the soul ; I ask 
only for that suspension of judgment, that dis- 
passionate weighing of the evidence which is 
essential to the discovery of truth. 

Under "Phantasms of the Living" are in- 
cluded all cases of apparitions seen within twelve 
hours after the death of the person whose appari- 
tion is seen. The reason given for this is that te- 
lepathy between living minds has been demon- 
strated by the experiments before described ; 
and reasoning from the know?i to the unknown, 
we must assume, where there is doubt, that the 
phantasm, when seen a few hours after death, 
was projected while the person was still living, 
and the perception of it was, by some unknown 
cause, deferred. That is, the dying person 
projects a semblance of himself, and six hours 
after his mind has ceased to act, his phantasm 
appears to a friend. By the act of dying, we 
are told, he releases the psychic energy which 
assumes the form of a phantasm, and after ap- 
pearing to a friend fades away into — well, cos- 
mic vapor. This is stretching the telepathic 
theory to the breaking point, but it has the 
merit, we are informed, of being strictly scien- 
tific. 

T. J. Hudson, in his " Law of Psychic Phe- 
88 



Psychical Research and a Future Life. 

nomena," based on materials taken from the 
Psychical Research Society's reports, carries 
this view still further — in fact, to an almost lu- 
dicrous extreme — and we find ourselves won- 
dering whether we are reading what purports 
to be a philosophical treatise or Bulwer Lyt- 
ton's "Strange Story." He states, in explana- 
tion of haunted houses — which he concedes 
to exist — that when a person dies a violent 
death, or when his mind at death is burdened 
with some great trouble, his phantasm is pro- 
jected and hangs around the scene of his for- 
mer activity, haunting the locality, often being 
seen and heard and having an objective exist- 
ence, capable of being photographed and pos- 
sessing the power of articulate speech. This 
phantom will exist for days, months, and even 
years, finally becoming disintegrated when its 
mission is accomplished. This is not the soul, 
but only the semblance of the physical body 
projected at death and subject, like it, to all 
the changes of the elements. Materializing 
mediums, when their manifestations are gen- 
uine, produce their phantasms by an exercise 
of the will, Hudson asserts. These specula- 
tions Hudson carries into a later book entitled 
a " Scientific Demonstration of a Future Life." 
You may judge from the samples I have given 

89 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

you how far the title is likely to be justified. 
Where his science fails he calls in the aid of 
Theology. 

Frederic Myers, to whom I have before re- 
ferred, one of the ablest members of the 
Psychical Research Society, as well as one of 
its founders, who has made exhaustive re- 
searches and original contributions to the liter- 
ature of the subjects of investigation, finds 
some difficulty in reconciling with the theory 
of telepathy the fact that most of the death- 
bed apparitions collected by the society appear 
in their street attire — coat, pantaloons, hat, 
necktie and collar. If they were projections 
of dying persons one would naturally expect 
them to appear in their bed-clothes, or minus 
any clothing, that being their condition at the 
time of projection. But these ghosts generally 
appear to carry a wardrobe with them, or to be 
able to improvise one out of the surrounding 
elements. Our Spiritualist friends would tell 
us, no doubt, that this would be a very easy 
feat for a spirit to perform. In fact, this 
affords an item of evidence in favor of the Spir- 
itualistic theory as opposed to the telepathic 
explanation. For, suppose the apparition seen, 
to be, not a projection of the dying person, 
but his spirit which appears after his death and 

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Psychical Research and a Future Life. 

presents itself to a friend or relative, it would 
naturally desire to appear in decent attire and 
also in such a way as to be recognized, and as 
all spirits are amateur chemists, it could read- 
ily improvise a wardrobe from the surrounding 
elements. But some of my audience will no 
no doubt prefer a more convenient way of solv- 
ing the problem — namely, by flatly denying 
the phantasms. But these phantasms, like the 
ghost seen in Hamlet, will not down. Denial 
of the facts was the method employed by the 
Church in meeting the discoveries of science 
that were in conflict with its dogmas. The 
representatives of Papal infallibility denied the 
existence of other planets as being in conflict 
with Scripture, and refused the invitation to 
look through Galileo's telescope to determine 
the truth. 

Before concluding, I shall refer to the re- 
markable case of Mrs. Piper, of Boston, who is 
subject to an abnormal trance condition into 
which she passes voluntarily, and which has 
been the subject of careful and exhaustive in- 
vestigation by some of the ablest members of 
the Psychical Research Society during the last 
ten years. She can not be classed as an ordi- 
nary trance medium of whom our large cities 
are full, who make money by preying on the 

91 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

most sacred emotions of the human heart. 
The utmost vigilance of skillful detectives, the 
most crucial tests employed by Professor 
Lodge and Frederic Myers, of England, and 
Dr. Hodgson, of Boston, have failed to disclose 
the slightest evidence of fraud. I have yet to 
hear of any person competent to form an intel- 
ligent and unbiased judgment who has charged 
her with the conscious perpetration of fraud. 
The professional men who have investigated 
her case, unite in crediting her with the pos- 
session, in her trance condition, of what they 
cautiously call "supernormal power of obtain- 
ing information." Dr. Hodgson took hundreds 
of persons to her, many of them eminent pro- 
fessors, and introduced them to her by fictitious 
names, nearly all of them receiving informa- 
tion about deceased relatives, startling in its 
correctness. While in this trance condition, 
other seeming personalities than her own nor- 
mal self manifest themselves through her 
organism — claiming to be the spirits of de- 
ceased relatives and friends of the sitters — 
giving names, dates and information in many 
cases unknown to the sitters — entering into the 
minutest details of incidents of domestic his- 
tory, that only a subsequent reference to fam- 
ily records and other sources of information, 

92 



Psychical Research and a Future Life. 

can verify. In many cases the mental peculiari- 
ties are reproduced, and the impression pro- 
duced upon the minds of the professional men 
before referred to, that they are actually com- 
municating with the spirits of the persons they 
claim to be, is so great, that they involunta- 
rily assume that attitude in addressing them 
and in referring to them in their reports. 

The authors of the telepathic theory, how- 
ever, account for all this as a species of telep- 
athy or thought-transference from the minds 
of the sitters to the mind of Mrs. Piper while 
entranced. They claim — and I believe have 
collected evidence that sustains the claim to 
some extent — that everything that enters the 
mind through the channels of the senses is 
registered in the memory, but only a part of 
it is consciously remembered, some vividly 
and some vaguely, but the largest part of 
which is forgotten — that is, not consciously 
remembered ; but it is there and will come to 
the surface — or, as Mr. Myers would say, rise 
above the threshold of consciousness — when 
the proper conditions obtain. This is ex- 
hibited in planchette and automatic writing 
and inspirational speaking, so-called, in which 
cases the mind acts unconsciously or semi- 
unconsciously, and reproduces its forgotten 

93 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

knowledge. This is well illustrated by the 
case of the illiterate woman, who, while in a 
fever, spoke Greek and Hebrew. An investi- 
gation of her antecedents showed that she had 
at one time lived with a clergyman, whose 
practice it was to read aloud in those lan- 
guages while walking up and down on his por- 
tico or in the house. The woman heard this, 
perhaps mechanically, so to speak, and her 
mind with its faculties sublimated by the fever, 
phonograph-like reproduced it. 

The mind of Mrs. Piper in her trance con- 
dition, is supposed to be peculiarly suscep- 
tible to telepathic impressions, as the mind of 
a hypnotic subject is to suggestion by the op- 
erator. Thus there is established a rapport 
between the mind of Mrs. Piper in her trance 
condition with its supernormal powers, and 
that vast region of knowledge lying latent in 
the mind of the sitter. The result is the start- 
ling messages from the supposed spirits. But 
here the theory of telepathy encounters a 
stumbling block, in the fact that things that are 
uppermost in the minds of the sitters are often 
not referred to by Mrs. Piper in her trance ; 
but other things of which they had no con- 
scious recollection, and information often at the 
time supposed to be incorrect, being given. 

94 



Psychical Research and a Future Life. 

How is it that a thing on which the mind is 
concentrated is not transferred to Mrs. Piper's 
mind ? Again, information unknown to any 
one present, or to Mrs. Piper, is often commu- 
nicated. Hence the telepathic theory is 
strained by its authors almost to the breaking 
point, when we are told that Mrs. Piper's mind 
in its trance condition, reaches out and gathers, 
by the telepathic process, the information from 
some living mind somewhere in the world. But, 
it may be suggested, is that other mind in rap- 
port with Mrs. Piper's mind — else how does 
she reach it? 

These telepathic theorizers, in their anxiety 
to avoid reference of the phenomena to the 
agency of spirits of the dead, here call to their 
aid another extremely hazy and nebulous — 
what shall I call it — speculation — yes, that will 
do. They say that perhaps we are surrounded 
by a kind of " Universal Mind Stuff" — in capital 
letters — (that might be a good thing to deify, 
since Science has expelled a personal God from 
the universe, and man's heart, we are told, 
craves something to worship) — a " Universal 
Mind Stuff," upon which is recorded an impres- 
sion of all that occurs in the world, as the 
events of an individual's life are impressed on 
his memory, or like the record made on the 

95 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

wax cylinder of the phonograph. Mrs. Piper's 
mind in the trance could reach out and gather 
such pieces of information as she desired to 
use from this universal store house of know- 
ledge, and unconsciously retail it as spirit 
messages. 

While telepathy may account, as we shall 
assume, for the information given by Mrs. 
Piper in her trance condition, how are we to 
account for the various personalities that mani- 
fest themselves through her organism ? These 
personalities, or whatever you may choose to 
call them, are always consistent in the roles 
they play, and always show the same peculiar- 
ities. Mr. Myers of the Psychical Research 
Society has advanced the theory of dual per- 
sonality or multiplex-consciousness — which, 
interpreted into plain English, means that Mrs. 
Piper's mind or consciousness is divided into 
a number of fragments which manifest them- 
selves as so many different personalities when 
she is entranced — or her own mind when en- 
tranced, unconsciously to her normal self, acts 
the role of these different personalities. 

Some time ago Mrs. Piper's case assumed 
a new phase — a personality would use her 
vocal organs to speak and at the same time 
another and entirely different personality 

96 



Psychical Research and a Future Life. 

would use her hand to write — both on differ- 
ent subjects and with different persons — on 
several occasions both hands and also the 
voice being all used simultaneously. 

Frederic Myers and other members of the 
Society admit that the telepathic theory does 
not satisfactorily account for the facts of Mrs. 
Piper's case ; but they prefer that theory to 
the Spiritualistic, because it has an experi- 
mental basis, as they claim. I suspect that 
they are also influenced, in rejecting the Spirit- 
ualistic explanation, by the odium attaching 
to Spiritualism. They repeatedly declare that 
they will exhaust all known natural causes, 
even if they are compelled to stretch them 
to the breaking point, before they will admit 
that Mrs. Piper's trance personalities are what 
they prima facie appear to be — namely, mani- 
festations of the spirits of deceased persons. 

I omitted to state that the experiment was 
made of having Mrs. Piper read the contents 
of a letter written by a lady interested in 
psychical research, which was written and 
sealed by her on her death-bed and handed 
to a friend for delivery to Dr. Hodgson. 
Thus no living mind knew the contents of 
the letter. Mrs. Piper in her trance condi- 
tion utterly failed to read it correctly, thus 

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Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

bearing out, in a negative way, the theory 
of telepathy. 

Dr. Richard Hodgson, one of the ablest 
members of the American branch of the So- 
ciety for Psychical Research, has made a care- 
ful personal study of Mrs. Piper's case, ex- 
tending over a period of ten years, and is 
better qualified to pronounce upon its char- 
acter than any one else. It was he who per- 
sonally conducted an investigation in India 
into the claims of Madame Blavatsky to occult 
power, and discovered and reported the fraud- 
ulent character of the marvels which her dis- 
ciples claimed she had worked. Dr. Hodg- 
son at one time accepted telepathy as the ex- 
planation of Mrs. Piper's case, but has finally 
rejected it as being inadequate. He says, in 
his last report, printed in the thirteenth volume 
of the "Proceedings " recently published, that 
the "spirit theory" is the most plausible. 
These are his words : " Holding the hypothe- 
sis of telepathy from the living for several 
years, and the spirit hypothesis also for several 
years, I have no hesitancy in affirming with the 
most absolute assurance, that the spirit hy- 
pothesis is justified by its fruits, and the other 
hypothesis is not." He bases this conviction 

98 



Psychical Research and a Future Life. 

partly on evidence obtained by personal con- 
tact with these trance personalities, and partly 
on communications too personal for publica- 
tion. In his report he goes into a minute and 
exhaustive analysis of the facts, and seems to 
make out a good case for what he calls the 
" spirit hypothesis." 

My auditors are no doubt wondering what con- 
nection all this talk about telepathy, phantasms, 
and ghostly wardrobes improvised from the air, 
has with the immortality of the soul. The con- 
nection is not so clear as might be desired for 
scientific precision, but admitting the facts (and 
I must confess it rather hard to reject them 
supported as they are by such a body of evi- 
dence), we find ourselves confronted by a fact, 
or inference, if you prefer, of tremendous sig- 
nificance — namely, the action of the human 
mind at a distance from the physical organism. 
In other words, the fundamental contention ot 
materialism — namely, that body and mind are 
so connected and related, that the action of the 
mind is entirely confined to the limits of the 
body and dies with the body, is shaken, if not 
overthrown. At all events, the presumption 
heretofore existing against a future existence, 
may be considered rebutted. 

Some of the more serious minded may think 

I L.ofC. 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

these things too trivial to occupy the attention 
of science ; but would it have been wise for 
Columbus to have turned back upon nearing 
the end of his momentous voyage of discovery 
because of the driftwood and floating rubbish 
indicating the approach of the new world, sup- 
posing these things could not come from a 
country worth discovering ? The strata of the 
earth are full of bones and other fossil remains, 
which to the vulgar mind are unmeaning, but 
are full of significance to the mind imbued 
with the spirit of scientific discovery. The 
greatest discoveries of science, our most won- 
derful mechanical inventions, were discovered 
by some slight hints which had previously 
escaped observation. 

I have seen the question asked from the ma- 
terialistic standpoint : When, in the process of 
organic development, did man become the pos- 
sessor of a soul ? When these objectors in- 
form me at what stage in organic evolution 
man ceased to be an animal and became man, 
possibly some light may be thrown on this im- 
portant problem. Again, we are told that if 
a man lives after death, why not animals? I 
ask, why not ? Admitting that man has noth- 
ing that animals do not possess — which is a stu- 

ioo 



Psychical Research and a Future Life. 

pendous assumption — until it is proved that 
animals do not survive, how can we infer that 
man's destinies end at the grave ? There is a 
fatal flaw in such logic. 

And to-day we are still pondering the prob- 
lem that perplexed the philosophers of old — 
the problem that has agitated the human heart 
and engaged the speculations of the human 
mind " ever since the Pleiades looked down on 
a breaking human heart " — " if a man die shall 
he live again?" Is the answer to our ques- 
tionings to-day any more certain than of old ? 
Has nature labored through all the countless 
ages of the past to bring man from the lowest 
forms of life — from a mere speck of protoplasm 
floating on the shoreless sea — to be the crown- 
ing work of creation — only to blot him out at 
last ? How full of mighty suggestions is that 
thought ! Blot out the mind that produced the 
divine melodies of a Beethoven, the specula- 
tions of a Newton, the dramas of a Shake- 
speare, the sublime thoughts of a Milton ! 

Blot out the intellect that penetrates into in- 
finite space, measures and weighs planets and 
analyzes the light coming from the most dis- 
tant stars ! Ah ! These are the pleadings the 
heart has uttered ever since love and affection 
played their divine melody in the human heart ! 

IOI 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

Everywhere around us we see stupendous 
waste. Countless forms of life are brought 
into existence only to live a minute or two, 
and but few survive. The rocky records of 
the earth bear testimony to the awful tragedy 
of life that has filled the earth with blood 
and pain through all these countless ages. 
Worlds and systems of worlds, suns and sys- 
tems of suns, have been evolved in the cycles 
of time through which the universe has run 
only to be resolved at last into vapor. What 
then is man, what these suns and systems of 
suns, what is a human life, what the life of a sys- 
tem of suns — only a spec — only a moment. 

' ' O yet we trust that somehow good 
Will be the final goal of ill, 
To pangs of nature, sins of will, 
Defects of doubt and taints of blood ; 

That nothing walks with aimless feet ; 

That not one life shall be destroyed, 

Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
When God hath made the pile complete ; 

That not a worm is cloven in vain ; 

That not a moth with vain desire 

Is shriveled in a fruitless fire 
Or but subserves another's gain. 
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Psychical Research and a Future Life. 

Behold we know not anything, 

I can only trust that good shall fall 
At last — far off — at last, to all, 

And every winter change to spring. 

So runs my dream ; but what am I ? 
An infant crying in the night : 
An infant crying for the light ; 

And with no language but a cry.''" 

103 



BEARING OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH ON 
MODERN MATERIALISM. 



This is an age of profound and far reach- 
ing changes. An age in which nothing has 
escaped the disintegrating effects of that spirit 
of doubt and inquiry that pervades every de- 
partment of life and knowledge. A secular 
age, in which we have removed our eyes 
from the clouds, the abode of the gods, and 
fixed them upon the earth, the abode of man. 
A materialistic age, in which we are disposed 
to interpret all the phenomena of nature in 
terms of matter and force, and to look upon 
mind as only a function of the brain, to be 
extinguished by death. A rationalistic age, 
in which every belief and opinion must ap- 
pear before the bar of reason for judgment, 
and in which the domain of the supernatural 
is constantly narrowing as day after day wit- 
nesses some new discovery in Science. An 
industrial age, in which energies heretofore 
occupied in preparing for Heaven, are now 
devoted to making this life as happy as pos- 
sible. 

104 



Psychical Research and Materialism. 

We are living in an age in which we are 
constantly called upon to revise our theories, 
readjust our ideas, and even to remodel our 
facts to make them conform to the new order 
of things disclosed by later discoveries. To 
the truly liberal mind, imbued with the spirit 
of truth, and not irrevocably committed to 
some particular system, this is an easy men- 
tal process. But to the narrow and bigoted, 
to him whose mind is fossilized, it is a more 
difficult matter. The habit, long cultivated, 
of looking at a thing from a certain stand- 
point, makes it extremely difficult to see it in 
any other aspect. We find it hard to believe 
that the earth's motion causes the sun to ap- 
pear to revolve around the earth, and in spite 
of ourselves, we habitually speak of the sun 
as rising and setting, and it is only by a strong 
effort of the mind, and by constantly keeping 
in mind the Copernican system, that we are 
prevented from falling into the vulgar error. 
To the great mass of mankind, who mistake 
appearances for reality, the sun daily revolves 
around the earth. These same people say 
that the earth is flat; "can't you see that it 
is, what is the use of talking about it?" is 
the argument with which they clinch the mat- 
ter. The little baby in its mother's arms also 

105 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

thinks that the shining moon is within its 
reach, and makes frantic efforts to catch it. 
We are constantly mistaking appearances for 
the reality. The history of intellectual devel- 
opment is only a record of these errors — the 
mistaking of appearances for reality — a record 
of the long and painful struggle of the human 
intellect to emancipate itself from the deceptive 
appearances by which man is surrounded. 

During the long night of History, when the 
human mind was in its infancy, man became 
the dupe of the most childish superstitions. 
The sun was a small ball of fire, and the stars 
were tiny lights placed in the heavens for man's 
sole use. Earthquakes, pestilences, comets and 
eclipses were produced by evil spirits or gods, 
to be propitiated by sacrifice and prayer. This 
marks the origin of religion. These spirits, 
and the gods who were their lineal descendants 
and legitimate successors, were like their wor- 
shipers, and possessed the same physical, men- 
tal and moral characteristics. They liked what 
their worshipers liked, and hated what they 
hated. In the course of time, a class of per- 
sons arose, a little more intelligent than the 
others, who professed to have the power of 
securing the favor of these gods and averting 
their ill-will by sacrifice and prayer. These 

106 



Psychical Research and Materialism. 

were the priests. They became the mediators 
between the gods and their worshipers — the 
ambassadors at the court of the gods. They 
interposed their sacred persons between the 
gods and their victims. They offered prayers 
and made sacrifices — sometimes by burning a 
lamb or other animal — or they flattered or ca- 
joled the gods, as occasion required. If the gods 
proved refractory, they occasionally transferred 
their allegiance to a rival god. And we are 
told, on the very best authority, that once 
upon a time, many years ago, the people so 
far forgot themselves as to abandon their god 
and worship a golden calf. What a degrad- 
ing spectacle ! And to be candid, I suspect 
that these same people continue to worship 
that golden calf even unto this day. 

These gods were very ignorant beings — 
though some of them, we are told on the very 
best authority, wrote a history of the earth in 
which they displayed remarkable knowledge of 
geography, astronomy and geology. The 
priests who looked after their sacred persons 
were equally ignorant, and their worshipers, 
if possible, still more ignorant. There were 
little gods and big gods, gods with one head 
and gods with three heads, gods with two 
arms and gods with four arms — these extra 

107 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

arms and heads were, I suppose, symbolical 
of the power and wisdom of these particular 
gods. So, you see, there was a germ of truth 
even in these rude superstitions. One species 
of gods had a solitary eye in the middle of 
his forehead. I trust the ladies will pardon me 
for speaking of these gods in the masculine 
gender — it is not my intention to slight the 
fair sex. To those of you who are familiar 
with the science of symbolism, the god with 
this solitary eye in his forehead, no doubt has 
a meaning unknown to the uninitiated. 

Occasionally, at this day, a rude stone god 
will be dug up and placed in a museum, and 
we look at it and ask ourselves if it is pos- 
sible that our ancestors actually worshiped 
this grotesque monster. Perhaps, if we were 
to dig into the literature of Christian theology 
prevalent two hundred years ago, we might 
find, among the fossils of dead creeds and dog- 
mas, an equally cruel-looking monster to whom 
our ancestors made daily sacrifice, and who 
was the lineal ancestor and blood relative of 
the one worshiped by us to-day. 

In course of time the gods grew in know- 
ledge, became less arbitrary and cruel — in a 
word, more civilized. Like the kings, whom 
they greatly resembled, they yielded more and 

1 08 



Psychical Research and Materialism. 

more to the demands of their worshipers. 
Little by little the dominions over which the 
gods ruled became smaller and smaller, until 
to-day, the territory left to them is shockingly 
small, and from that they will be shortly driven 
into ignominious exile, friendless and homeless 
wanderers. We may then exclaim, in the words 
of William Kingdom Clifford : — " The dim and 
shadowy outlines of the superhuman deity fade 
slowly away before us ; and as the mist of his 
presence floats aside, we perceive with greater 
and greater clearness the shape of a yet 
grander and nobler figure — of Him who made 
all gods and shall unmake them. From the 
dim dawn of history, and from the inmost 
depths of every soul, the face of our father 
Man looks out upon us with the fire of eter- 
nal youth in his eyes, and says, ' Before Je- 
hovah was, I am!' " 

I have no quarrel to pick with these gods, 
any more than with the law of gravitation 
for dashing me to pieces when I fall from a 
building. They are but a link in the chain of 
progress, a step in the scheme of evolution, 
and express the feelings and thoughts of their 
day. We must have the rude pictures of sav- 
ages, without perspective or expression, before 
we can reach the grandeur of a Raphael. We 

109 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

must pass through the rude discord of the bar- 
barian, before we can reach the sublime har- 
mony of a Beethoven or a Mozart. The rude 
cosmogony of primitive man, with its reign of 
spirits and gods, must precede the later and 
grander conception of a universe governed by 
immutable law. These crude attempts, these 
blind gropings of early man, are but the mani- 
festations of that same spirit of inquiry that 
distinguishes man from the lower animals, and 
which has culminated in the grander discoveries 
of the Nineteenth Century. 

It would require volumes to describe those 
discoveries — a mere passing reference is all 
that the limits of my lecture will permit. Has 
any previous century witnessed such a trans- 
formation of ideas, such an overturning of ac- 
cepted theories, such a remodeling of facts, 
such an awakening of intellect ? To a person 
living two hundred years ago the marvels 
achieved by science during the last half cen- 
tury would read like the tales of the "Arabian 
Nights' Entertainments." Imagine the air of 
incredulity, the smile of derision with which 
even Sir Isaac Newton would have received 
the statement that the human voice could be 
transmitted a thousand miles so as to be 
audible, or could be "bottled up" and heard 

no 



Psychical Research and Materialism. 

centuries later; or what would be his wonder 
on hearing of the marvels of modern pho- 
tography, the X-ray, wireless telegraphy, or 
liquid air. He would have found " no niche in 
his mental fabric into which to fit such things," 
as John Tyndallsaid, speaking of the alleged 
phenomena of Spiritualism. But the marvels of 
one age become the commonplaces of the next, 
and the wise man no longer assigns limits to 
nature's possibilities. We are beginning to 
learn to hold all our opinions open to the re- 
vision often made necessary by later and fuller 
knowledge. Any person who is unable to do 
this, whether scientist or theologian, has a fos- 
silized mind. 

Science has its fetiches as well as theology, 
which must be destroyed as ruthlessly as the 
religious idols of old. The so-called scientific 
men have often assailed new theories with as 
much rancor as the theologians of old. They 
have their " Index-Expurgatorius " and their 
" Confessions of Faith," to which all must sub- 
scribe on penalty of being stigmatized as heter- 
odox. They have no dungeons, no inquisitions 
from whose subterranean chambers the cries of 
the helpless victims resound, no racks on which 
to break your bones, and no thumbscrews with 
which to strengthen your weakening faith, but 

in 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

woe to him who strays from the beaten path ! 
If science has canonized its votaries, it has 
likewise made martyrs as well as religion. 

For years scientific men denied the existence 
of meteoric stones. Lavoisier, speaking in the 
name of the French Academy of Science, de- 
clared, " There are no stones in the skies ; 
therefore none can fall upon the earth!" This 
statement, the very quintessence of theolog- 
ical dogmatism, remained unchallenged until 
1803, in which year a very large meteoric 
stone fell in France, where the phenomenon was 
witnessed by several thousand people. The 
French Academy despatched one of its mem- 
bers to investigate the occurrence, and upon 
his return with a fragment of the stone, the 
most skeptical became convinced of the reality 
of meteoric phenomena. For centuries these 
stones had been falling upon the earth, all over 
the world, in full view, and yet it was not until 
1803 that science condescended to inquire into 
the phenomenon, and finally admit its occur- 
rence. This seems scarcely credible, yet it is 
an undisputed fact, forever warning us against 
rash and hasty conclusions. 

The subject of "Hypnotism" suffered the 
same fate, having received scant attention from 
scientific men until its investigation was under- 



Psychical Research and Materialism. 

taken by James Braid, an English medical man, 
in 1 84 1, who directed the attention of the med- 
ical world to its therapeutic power in a paper 
read before the British Association in Man- 
chester. Subsequently, the experiments and 
researches of Bernheim and Leibault, and 
finally of Charcot, took the subject out of the 
field of charlatanry and placed it where it re- 
ceived full scientific endorsement and recogni- 
tion. Having long occupied, in the estimation 
of orthodox science, the same category as 
astrology, alchemy and similar delusions, and 
having been relegated to town-hall lecturers 
and self-styled professors who employed it to 
amuse children and old women, the subject 
was now placed by these patient and fearless 
men in a position of respectability. Thus, 
mesmerism or quackery, became, in the dress 
of science, Hypnotism. Later, the subject was 
taken up by the Society for Psychical Research, 
and has acquired a new interest in view of the 
light it has thrown on many of the obscure 
problems under investigation by that society. 
On a former occasion, I delivered a lecture 
before your society entitled " Psychical Re- 
search and a Future Life." On that occasion 
my treatment of Psychical Research was nec- 
essarily brief, and I fear, to some of my au- 

113 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

dience, somewhat obscure. The subject being 
in a measure removed, by reason of the mys- 
ticism and occultism by which it is supposed 
to be surrounded, from every-day thought, it 
will require a fuller exposition than I gave it in 
my former lecture, to bring it to the compre- 
hension of my entire audience. 

The Society for Psychical Research was or- 
ganized in 1882. Its organization was sug- 
gested by the experiments of Prof. William 
Crookes, and particularly by those of the " Dia- 
lectical Society of London," which showed 
conclusively that ponderable objects could be 
moved without the intervention of any known 
natural force. The objects of the society being 
the investigation of the possibility of thought- 
transference, so-called haunted houses, authen- 
tic reports of apparitions, hypnotism, clair- 
voyance, Spiritualistic phenomena — in a word, 
all the phenomena roughly classed as psy- 
chical. The circular issued by the society 
stated : " From the recorded testimony of 
many competent observers, past and present, 
including observations recently made by men 
of eminence in various countries, there appears 
to be, amidst much illusion and deception, an 
important body of remarkable phenomena, 
which are prima facie inexplicable on any gen- 

114 



Psychical Research and Materialism. 

erally recognized hypothesis, and which, if in- 
contestably established, would be of the highest 
possible value. The task of examining such 
residual phenomena has often been undertaken 
by individual effort, but never hitherto by a 
scientific society organized on a sufficiently 
broad basis." Prof. Sidgwick, of Cambridge, 
was the first President of the society, and in 
his presidential address stated that it was a 
scandal to science that the occurrence of such 
marvelous phenomena as it was the proposed 
object of the society to investigate, should be 
so hotly debated, when the question was sus- 
ceptible of answer by simple observation and 
experimentation. He said, "the primary aim 
of our society, the thing which we all unite 
to promote, whether as believers or unbe- 
lievers, is to make a sustained and systematic 
attempt to remove this scandal in one way 
or another. Some of those whom I address 
feel, no doubt, that this attempt can only lead 
to the proof of most of the alleged phenom- 
ena ; some, again think it probable that most, 
if not all, will be disproved ; but regarded as 
a society we are quite unpledged, and as indi- 
viduals we are all agreed that any particular in- 
vestigation that we may make should be car- 
ried on with a single-minded desire to ascertain 

115 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

the facts, and without any foregone conclu- 
sion as to their nature." 

The society proposed to investigate the sub- 
jects before mentioned "without prejudice or 
prepossession of any kind, and in the same 
spirit of exact and unimpassioned inquiry which 
has enabled Science to solve so many prob- 
lems, once not less obscure nor less hotly de- 
bated." Speaking of the attitude of so-called 
scientific men on this subject, Prof. Sidgwick, 
in the course of his presidential address, fur- 
ther said: "Thirty years ago it was thought 
want of scientific culture was an adequate ex- 
planation of the vulgar belief in mesmerism 
and table tipping. Then, as one man after an- 
other came forward with the results of indi- 
vidual investigation, there was quite a ludicrous 
ingenuity exercised in finding reasons for dis- 
crediting his scientific culture. He was said to 
be an amateur, not professional ; or a specialist, 
without adequate generality of view and train- 
ing ; or a mere discoverer, not acquainted with 
the strict methods of experimental research ; 
or he was not a Fellow of the Royal Society, 
or if he was it was by an unfortunate accident. 
Or, again, national distrust came in ; it was in 
America that these things went on ; or, as I 
was told myself, in Germany, some years ago, 

116 



Psychical Research and Materialism. 

it was only in England, or America, or France, 
or Italy, or Russia, or some half educated coun- 
try, but not in the land of Geist." 

It was distinctly understood that the society, 
as a body, was not to be responsible for the 
opinions of individual members thereof. The 
subjects which the society proposed to investi- 
gate were now to be taken from the field of 
charlatanry and receive a systematic, impartial 
and scientific treatment, thus commending the 
results to the serious consideration of the think- 
ing public. The names of the eminent men 
from every walk of life who were associated 
with the movement, were alone a guarantee of 
honesty, impartiality and sobriety of judgment. 

Among the founders of the society may be 
mentioned the names of Prof. Henry Sidgwick, 
of Cambridge ; Prof. Balfour Stewart, one of 
the joint authors of the "Unseen Universe" 
and a Fellow of the Royal Society ; Ar- 
thur J. Balfour, M. P., also a Fellow of the 
Royal Society ; Edmund Gurney and F. W. 
H. Myers, who by their indefatigable labors 
and original contributions to the literature of 
the society, soon took rank as two of its 
ablest members. Mr. Myers has written a 
number of works on literary subjects, but will 
be chiefly known by his lucid, exhaustive and 

117 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

original speculations on the "subliminal self" 
or sub-consciousness, of which I shall speak 
more fully later. The membership of the 
society soon comprised the most eminent 
literary, scientific and professional persons, as 
well as distinguished laymen, of England, 
America, Germany, France, and in fact, every 
part of the civilized world. Later a branch 
of the society was established in the United 
States, including among its members Prof. 
S. P. Langley, of the Smithsonian Institution ; 
Professors Bowditch, Pickering and Royce, 
of Harvard, and Prof. William James, also of 
Harvard, who has written several works that 
are regarded as high authorities on Psychol- 
ogy. Prof. O. J. Lodge, well-known in Eng- 
land by his experiments in wireless teleg- 
raphy, has been an active and valuable mem- 
ber almost from the inception of the society. 
Sir William Crookes, Fellow of the Royal 
Society, with whose name many of you are 
probably familiar, as being one of the first 
scientific men who had the courage to inves- 
tigate Spiritualism, has long been an active 
and efficient laborer in the field of Psychical 
Research. 

I shall conclude this list of names of dis- 
tinguished members of the Society for Psy- 

118 



Psychical Research and Materialism. 

chical Research with a name that might carry 
great weight with many persons — if any 
name could carry weight in problems largely 
speculative — that of William E. Gladstone, 
who declared that the work being done by the 
society was by far the most important of the 
age. 

My audience may doubt the feasibility of 
bringing this subject within the sphere of scien- 
tific investigation. You may wonder how a 
ghost can be caught, and if caught, how ana- 
lyzed or dissected. If one should be caught, 
could it be bottled and preserved in the so- 
ciety's museum to confound hard-headed ma- 
terialists? Some time ago, a piece of very 
delicate, gossamer-like material was shown to 
me in a hermetically sealed bottle by a promi- 
nent Spiritualist, who informed me that he had 
cut it from the dress of a spirit that materi- 
alized at a recent seance. Why not perform 
the same feat with a ghost? The efforts of 
the Psychical Research Society to investigate 
haunted houses may provoke your derision ; 
our bold inquirers venturing out on the bound- 
less and unknown sea like the explorers of old, 
may even suffer the fate of the eminent phi- 
losophers who undertook the capture of the 
celebrated Cock-Lane ghost. While the sub- 

119 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

ject may be surrounded by the same kind of 
difficulty that Buckle encountered in trying to 
found a science of history, still I believe it 
amenable to scientific treatment. At all events, 
the persons who founded the Psychical Re- 
search Society, so thought. That this belief 
was justified is shown by the results of the 
eighteen years' labors of which I shall give a 
brief summary. 

The society, to facilitate its work, divided 
up its active members into committees, to each 
of which was assigned some special subject for 
investigation or experimentation. Thus there 
were committees on "Phantasms of the Liv- 
ing," " Haunted Houses," " Hypnotism," "Al- 
leged Spiritual Phenomena," etc. Each com- 
mittee, after having made a careful and 
exhaustive examination of its special subject, 
prepared and submitted a written report em- 
bodying the results of its work as well as the 
conclusions at which it had arrived. These 
reports were read at the meetings of the so- 
ciety, and were subsequently printed in its 
published "Proceedings" thenceforth becoming 
part of its permanent literature. These reports, 
the written criticisms thereon, and the articles 
on the various subjects discussed, and contrib- 
uted from time to time by members, or read 

1 20 



Psychical Research and Materialism. 

before the society, make up the bulk of the 
thirteen volumes of "Proceedings" published 
up to date. They constitute a rich mine of in- 
formation on the subject of abnormal Psychol- 
ogy, of which such writers as Thomas Hudson, 
in " The Law of Psychic Phenomena," and R. 
O. Mason, in his "Telepathy and the Sublim- 
inal Self," have largely availed themselves in 
the preparation of those popular works. 

F. W. H. Myers, whom I have frequently cited, 
has contributed, from time to time, a series of 
intensely interesting and suggestive papers on 
what he calls the " subliminal self." These 
papers cover the entire period of the society's 
existence, and open up an entirely new field 
in experimental Psychology, and entitle Mr. 
Myers to a high rank as a profound and orig- 
inal thinker in that science. He may be con- 
sidered as the leading representative of the 
society of what may be described as the " spirit- 
ualistic interpretation" of some of the more 
puzzling phenomena brought to light by the 
society's labors. I must not be understood to 
mean by this that he sees the action of "spirits " 
in the more occult phenomena — I here use the 
word occult as meaning difficult to explain by 
reference to k7iown physical or psychical laws 
— but he thinks that they indicate, with more 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

or less force, the survival of human conscious- 
ness in some form or other — that they point to 
the possibility, if not probability, of the exist- 
ence of a world of mind which has points of 
contact with this world of which we know, whose 
orbit, to use a comparison borrowed from as- 
tronomy, occasionally intersects the orbit of 
our physical world, as the earth's orbit 
crosses, at times, the path through which the 
meteoric matter travels around the sun and 
draws down into its atmosphere showers of 
meteoric dust which appears to us as bright 
lights, commonly called shooting stars, which 
have excited our wonder and superstition in 
the past ; so also, when contact occurs between 
this world and the world of mind we have psy- 
chical phenomena that also in the past excited 
the wonder and superstition of the ignorant. 

In a recent paper entitled " Psychology and 
Mysticism," Prof. Miinsterberg, of Harvard, 
disparages the work of the Psychical Research 
Society as a dabbling in mysticism. The words 
mystical and occult have been abused almost 
as much as the word supernatural. Nothing 
is mystical, occult, or supernatural in any other 
sense than not being understood. Everything 
that occurs is a fact of nature, and occurs in 
conformity to some law or laws or order of na- 

122 



Psychical Research and Materialism. 

ture. That a phenomenon is occult, that 
is, not understood, is all the more reason 
why science should investigate its cause and 
the laws that govern it. The history of science 
is but a record of the work it has done in trac- 
ing every phenomenon to its causes, circum- 
scribing the domain of the supernatural, and 
reducing all facts to an orderly system. 

In his papers on " Phantasms of the Dead " 
(which comprise all those cases of apparitions 
seen more than twelve hours after the death of 
the person), Mr. Myers analyzes the evidence 
by which they are substantiated, and considers 
telepathy as a possible explanation. He finds 
much in these cases indicating survival of hu- 
man consciousness and this view he elaborates 
in his little volume, "Science and a Future 
Life." Mr. Myers combines in these specula- 
tions boldness and caution ; but the imagina- 
tive faculty, so largely developed in him, and 
which is so essential to bold, original thinking, 
is always held within proper bounds by his cau- 
tious and critical spirit. 

Frank Podmore, one of Mr. Myers' collab- 
orators in the preparation of the work " Phan- 
tasms of the Living," is the exponent of the 
opposite, or materialistic, interpretation of the 
phenomena, holding that none of the phenom- 

123 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

ena indicate anything beyond telepathy or 
thought-transference and the action of the sub- 
conscious mind. His views are ably main- 
tained in the papers contributed by him, at 
various times, to the published "Proceedings " 
of the society, and are summarized in his pub- 
lished works, "Studies in Psychical Research" 
and "Apparitions and Thought-transference." 
Both Myers and Podmore agree, however, 
that apparitions seen within twelve hours after 
death (the limit was fixed at twelve hours 
rather arbitrarily, because a line had to be 
drawn somewhere) are of telepathic origin — 
that is, that at death the psychic energy that 
is stored in every living person is released, and 
in some cases, where the conditions are favor- 
able, as the Spiritualists would say, is projected 
in the form of a semblance of the dying person, 
and appears, perhaps, to some relative or friend 
of whom the dying person was earnestly think- 
ing at the time of death. In some instances 
the apparition is not seen at the very moment 
of death, but some hours afterward — which 
would, at first thought, seem to indicate a sur- 
vival of human consciousness for at least a 
short time after physical dissolution. But both 
Myers and Podmore concur in the view, that 
when the appearance of this phantom is de- 

124 



Psychical Research and Materialism. 

layed not more than twelve hours, it is simply 
a case of deferred percipience, or to use a 
more familiar word — perception. The mind of 
the person to whom the apparition manifests 
itself, may not, at the time the telepathic im- 
pression or phantasm is projected, be in a 
condition favorable to its perception, there- 
fore the impression does not become visible to 
the physical senses until more favorable condi- 
tions obtain, which may not occur until several 
hours later. This condition obtains when the 
mind is in a reverie, abstraction, sleep, or half 
sleep, or hypnotic trance — in a word, when all 
external stimuli are absent. This is the pas- 
sivity the necessity of which the Spiritualists 
emphasize. Even those cases where the appa- 
rition is seen by more than one person at the 
same time — the society's records contain many 
such — both these gentlemen agree are tele- 
pathic, the telepathic impression being received 
at first by one and then unconsciously conveyed 
by him to the mind of his companions. Mr. 
Myers, however, thinks the telepathic impres- 
sion is received directly by all the percipients, 
and not transferred by the mind of one to the 
other. I am inclined to think that some of my 
audience may think the original telepathic im- 
pression rather attenuated, and that the trans- 

125 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

fer of it from one mind to another renders it 
still more attenuated. The Spiritualists will 
readily recognize in these phantasms denizens 
from the "Debatable Land," while I have no 
doubt the materialists will see in them nothing 
more than a "dominant idea." 

But when the apparition is seen a month, 
or a year, or several years after death, the 
difficulty of accounting for it on the theory 
of telepathy becomes almost insurmountable. 
Rather than abandon his favorite theory and 
have recourse to the agency of the so-called 
dead, Mr. Podmore, in his papers on " Phan- 
tasms of the Dead," attempts to trace all ot 
these cases to other sources which involve no 
new hypothesis ; but, in trying to follow his 
reasoning, we often find ourselves confronted 
by greater difficulties than those presented by 
the spiritistic explanation. I fear that Mr. 
Podmore's devotion to his "telepathic hobby," 
and his strong repugnance to see any evi- 
dence of man's survival in these phenomena, 
often blinded him to their real significance. 
By pursuing this line he may have been en- 
abled to hold fast to his materialistic moor- 
ings, but I fear he was not so likely to arrive 
at the truth as Mr. Myers, his fellow worker 
in the field of Psychical Research. We must 

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Psychical Research and Materialism. 

admit, however, with Mr. Podmore, that the 
" spiritistic explanation" involves the stupen- 
dous assumption that the mind, which appears, 
according to all the known facts of physiol- 
ogy, to be a mere function of the brain and 
nervous system, persists after their dissolution. 
Mr. Podmore, therefore, thinks we ought to 
exhaust every other explanation, however far 
fetched or seemingly improbable, before we re- 
gard these ghosts as other than a mere passing 
phantasmagoria, or as photographic impressions 
made on the " Mind Stuff" by which we are 
perhaps surrounded, which are destined to 
grow fainter and fainter as time passes, and 
finally to become altogether obliterated. 

The opposing views taken by these repre- 
sentative thinkers may be the result of tempera- 
ment or training, or may be the result of some 
unconscious bias — which of these I am unable 
to determine. They are both very able and 
fair minded and have a large following. 

The great result accomplished by the So- 
ciety for Psychical Research, which stands out 
prominently, and alone justifies its existence, is 
the establishment of telepathy, or, in a narrower 
sense, thought-transference. Nearly all the su- 
pernormal — not supernatural — operations of 
the human mind are correlated and explained 

127 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

by the generalization known as telepathy. Te- 
lepathy, it may be said, is supported by the 
same kind of evidence as the law of gravita- 
tion. Certain phenomena are found to occur 
in a certain order or sequence, and the infer- 
ence is drawn that they are in some way re- 
lated to each other. Why or how they occur 
in that way we do not know — we only know 
the fact of their occurrence. How the load- 
stone attracts steel we do not know — all we 
know is the bare fact of such attraction. Te- 
lepathy is a comparatively rare occurrence; 
but if we knew all the conditions neces- 
sary to its occurrence it would not tax our cred- 
ulity so much. You may ask, why does it not 
occur to every one ? I can only answer that 
the psychical conditions must be present. 
There must be a mind to project the telepathic 
impression and one favorable to its reception. 
How often will we find these two conditions 
concurring ? 

In order to account for the transmission of 
light from the heavenly bodies to our earth, 
physical science has been forced to assume the 
existence of a very subtle fluid to which it has 
given the name of ether, and which is supposed 
to fill interstellar space. This is the physical 
vehicle by means of which vibrations of light 

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Psychical Research and Materialism. 

are carried from the most distant stars to our 
eyes. So the psychical interaction observed 
to-day in various forms is called telepathy. 
For, as Tennyson, with prophetic intuition, 
expressed it: 

" Star to star vibrates light ; may soul to soul 
Strike thro' some fine element of her own?" 

But in the case of telepathy, science has not 
yet determined the nature of the vehicle by 
which mind communicates with mind independ- 
ently of sense. That the vehicle is some form 
of matter, however sublimated, all the analo- 
gies of science and nature seem to indicate. 

Camille Flammarion, the French scientist, in 
his recent work, " The Unknown," inclines to 
the view that in some form of vibration the so- 
lution of this difficult problem may be found. 

The tuning fork that vibrates in unison 
with another in the same key, and the trans- 
mission of messages by wireless telegraphy, as 
well as the wonderful penetrative power of the 
X-Ray, are suggestive physical analogies. It 
is in the experimental study of these subtle 
forces of nature that a possible solution of 
these obscure psychical phenomena may lie. 

Telepathy, then, may be defined to be the 
communication of one mind with another in a 

129 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

manner other than through the recognized 
channels of the senses. I will give you a 
simple case, one out of seven hundred, illus- 
trating the operation of this law. Mrs. S. is 
suddenly awakened in the morning by expe- 
riencing the sensation of being struck in the 
mouth by some object, and, on investigation, 
can find nothing, but is informed by her hus- 
band, who was absent at the time, that, at 
the very time she had her experience, he 
was accidentally struck in the mouth by an 
oar while at sea. This is a typical case 
of telepathy. You may perhaps smile in your 
superior wisdom and declare that this is simply 
a coincidence. But this is only one of about 
seven hundred cases selected by the society 
from several thousand collected by the com- 
mittee, to whom was assigned this subject for 
investigation. All the cases have been care- 
fully studied and are well authenticated. Mr. 
and Mrs. Sidgwick, two of the ablest members 
of the society, have made a mathematical cal- 
culation of the cases, and found that the cases, 
where the apparition of a person is seen on the 
day of his death, are four hundred and forty 
too numerous to be explained by chance. 

Sometimes the telepathic impression comes 
as a recognized voice conveying warning of 

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Psychical Research and Materialism. 

danger, or information of some distant event, 
or death — affecting some one known to the 
percipient, or the person receiving the mes- 
sage. Sometimes the telepathic impression is 
only felt as a vague feeling of danger or dis- 
tress. But in all of these cases — some seven 
hundred — an event, such as death, accident, or 
other crisis of some kind, is found to coincide 
with the telepathic impression. Time and 
date always correspond in such a way as to 
exclude the idea of chance. 

Adolph D'Assier, a member of the Bordeaux 
Academy of Science, has written an interest- 
ing volume entitled "Posthumous Humanity," 
in which he dissects these ghosts, classifies 
them, and traces them to their sources. While 
a vein of levity and sarcasm seems to per- 
vade the work, it is evidently very serious, 
although some of the conclusions the writer 
draws are rather fantastic. His notion that 
ghosts that haunt certain localities are a sem- 
blance of some person who died there by vio- 
lent means or whose mind was greatly bur- 
dened at death, has been adopted by Thomas 
Hudson and elaborated in his " Law of Psy- 
chic Phenomena," a work with a very preten- 
tious title which is not justified by its contents. 
These ghosts, we are told, are a semblance of 

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Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

the person, projected at death, and continue 
to haunt the locality, having an objective ex- 
istence, being seen and heard and capable of 
being photographed, and possessing the power 
of articulate speech. They are not the soul or 
spirit, or the psychical entirety of the person, 
as they seem to have memory of but few inci- 
dents of earth life, and are subject to the dis- 
integrating effects of the elements, and in time 
become dissipated when their mission has 
been accomplished. Thus, you see, the stories 
of haunted houses and ghosts are not all super- 
stitions, and Crowe's "Night Side of Nature" 
may not be a collection of old women's tales. 
The society's records contain a number of 
cases of persons projecting a semblance of 
themselves by an exercise of will. The phan- 
tasm is projected while the person is asleep, 
or in a semi-unconscious condition, and it is 
seen and recognized. These cases are no 
doubt authentic, as they were received first- 
hand from persons of undoubted veracity and 
intelligence. I suppose the materialists among 
my audience will smile at them, but let them 
remember that their philosophy is not the Al- 
pha and Omega of human knowledge. If it 
is the authority of great names you want, let 
me remind you that these things are vouched 

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Psychical Research and Materialism. 

for by persons eminent in every department 
of human knowledge. Remember that the 
meteoric stones fell upon the earth for seven- 
teen hundred years before Science took note 
of them. I shall now dismiss these ghosts, the 
aristocracy of the air, as Colonel Ingersoll 
calls them, and take up the subject of the 
"subliminal self." 

The "subliminal self" is a phrase, coined, I 
believe, by Frederic Myers. It is also called 
sub-consciousness, secondary self or subjective 
mind. Mr. Myers is entitled to the credit of 
having opened this vast store-house of psy- 
chological knowledge to the world. It fur- 
nishes a key to many hitherto unsolved prob- 
lems in Psychology, it explains many pre- 
viously obscure phenomena, and brings within 
the operation of law what had once been 
deemed manifestations of the supernatural. 
Many of the occurrences recorded in History 
from the earliest times down to the present 
day, which the ignorant and superstitious have 
looked upon as supernatural, are, in the light 
of the discoveries of the "New Psychology," 
nothing more than supernormal — not super- 
natural — psychical manifestations. Just as 
comets and eclipses, which were comparatively 
rare occurrences, whose causes were unknown, 

i33 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

were once regarded as supernatural, so these 
other psychical phenomena, being also rare 
and more difficult to trace, were also deemed 
supernatural by the superstitious. 

The Greeks and Romans had their oracles 
who claimed the possession of prophetic power; 
later came Mohammed who communed with 
the angel Gabriel, and in modern times 
Swedenborg, to whose eyes the other world 
was opened as a book, and later still, in 1841, 
Andrew Jackson Davis, the " Poughkeepsie 
Seer," an illiterate shoemaker, who wrote that 
extraordinary book, " Nature's Divine Reve- 
lations," being a complete history of the earth 
and solar system, showing a knowledge of as- 
tronomy, geology, sociology, comparative re- 
ligion and general history that could only be 
acquired ordinarily by laborious study. The 
Spiritualists ascribed this book to spirits, the 
unbelieving to fraud, but in the light of the 
discoveries of Psychical Research, neither is cor- 
rect. Mr. Myers would say that it was Davis' 
''subliminal self" or subconscious mind, with 
its superior powers and knowledge, that pro- 
duced it. I repeat, all these strange phenom- 
ena, which have occurred in every age and 
among every people, savage and civilized, and 
which the ignorant and superstitious have 

i34 



Psychical Research and Materialism. 

deemed supernatural, are now traced to telep- 
athy and the action of the subconscious mind. 
According to the view of Mr. Myers, every- 
thing that enters the mind through the chan- 
nels of the senses makes an impression on the 
mind and is stored up therein, but only a small 
fragment of it is consciously remembered or 
becomes a part of the normal, every day self, 
or consciousness. The mind, to use a rather 
rude analogy, is like the earth, consist- 
ing of a number of strata or layers, each of 
which represents and contains a record of the 
mind's various stages of development, or phases 
of its history during life. Each of these layers 
or strata of the mind contains a complete chain 
of memories and incidents, or impressions per- 
taining thereto, and constitutes in itself a sepa- 
rate and individual self, to all of which Mr. 
Myers has given the name of " subliminal 
self." This subliminal or secondary self lies 
below the threshold of our normal, every day 
consciousness — that is, it constitutes no part of 
our normal, waking or every day consciousness. 
The "subliminal self" has superior powers of 
perception called clairvoyance, where the vision 
is extended to distant events, or exercised in- 
dependently of the physical senses, or what is 
called clairaudience, where sounds or voices 

i35 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

are heard from a distance, independently of the 
bodily ear. In some individuals, peculiarly con- 
stituted, the " subliminal self" quite frequently 
comes into play and displaces, for the time, the 
normal self. We see this exhibited in trance, 
or the so-called inspirational speaking of the 
spiritual medium. At other times it is only 
manifested in some crisis of life, as at death, 
or in time of great personal danger. When a 
person is drowning, his whole life is said to 
flash before his mind like a" panorama. The 
extreme crisis through which he is passing evi- 
dently causes an upheaval of his subconscious 
mind, or "subliminal self," with all of its latent 
memories accumulated during- the entire life- 
time — as a volcano causes an upheaval of the 
earth's interior, disclosing the strata under- 
neath with their rocky records, long hidden 
from human eye. 

In some cases the "subliminal self" sends 
messages to the supraliminal or every-day con- 
sciousness, which find expression in automatic 
and planchette writing and in the trance or in- 
spirational utterances of the spiritual medium. 
Sometimes the "subliminal self" assumes con- 
trol, for the time being, and displaces the nor- 
mal consciousness ; this is exhibited in auto- 
matic and planchette writing and trance utter- 

136 



Psychical Research and Materialism. 

ance. This is called automatism by Mr. Myers, 
because it takes place without a conscious ex- 
ercise of the mind or will power. In some 
cases this condition is induced by hypnotism, 
and in others it is self-induced, as in the case 
of the spiritual medium who goes voluntarily 
into a trance. In all of these cases the mind 
exhibits superior powers which have hitherto 
been ascribed by the Spiritualists to spirit con- 
trol, which, however, the "New Psychology" 
now demonstrates, for the first time, to be the 
result of the operation of previously unknown 
psychical laws. Thus, the learning and elo- 
quence displayed by Andrew Jackson Davis 
in " Nature's Divine Revelations;" the poetry 
written by Henry Kiddle's little girl by the aid 
of a planchette and purporting to come from 
Shakespeare, Byron and other deceased poets ; 
the beautiful and elevated sentiments of Ed- 
munds and Dexter's book on Spiritualism, pur- 
porting to describe the spirit world and writ- 
ten automatically ; even the mathematical pro- 
digy, who, without previous training and in a 
twinkling, solves the most difficult mathemat- 
ical problems, all show the exercise of the 
supernormal powers of the " subliminal self." 
The immense store-house of knowledge, which 
lies latent in the sub-conscious regions of the 

i37 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

mind, is thus drawn upon and exhibited to the 
astonished world as a miracle or supernatural 
revelation. 

We must remember that our every-day con- 
sciousness constitutes but a small part of 
the immense reservoir of psychical life and 
experience that lies below the threshold of our 
consciousness. This submerged consciousness 
comes into play only when conditions are fav- 
orable to its emergence. The crisis through 
which a drowning person is passing appears 
to cause a dissociation between the currents 
of his being, or a liberation of his "subliminal 
self," which appears to a distant percipient as 
a phantasm or is heard as a voice, or perhaps, 
the conditions not being very favorable to its 
perception, only succeeds in impressing the 
percipient with a vague sense of evil or mis- 
fortune. In some cases — as in that of S. H. B., 
cited in "Phantasms of the Living," where a 
semblance of the person was projected by an 
exercise of the will and seen on two different 
occasions by two ladies in whose bed-chamber 
it appeared — no recollection was retained by 
the person, on waking, of what had occurred. It 
seems that the "subliminal self" had appeared 
to the ladies and acted in a dream-like way, 
and when S. H. B. awakened — for it was dur- 

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Psychical Research and Materialism. 

ing sleep that the projection took place — his 
normal self knew nothing of what had occurred 
to his " subliminal self." The same peculiar- 
ity is noted in hypnotic trance and in somnam- 
bulism, the subject on waking, retaining no 
recollection of what he said or did while in 
that condition, but on being subsequently re- 
stored to the same condition, again remem- 
bers everything he said and did on the former 
occasion. This shows that there are two or 
more distinct streams of consciousness in every 
individual, each with its own peculiarities, chain 
of memories, etc. 

A case that attracted considerable attention 
in the medical world was that of Felida X., re- 
ported by Dr. Azman, of Bordeaux. This 
person had two distinct personalities, each with 
its own characteristics and chain of memories, 
etc. The normal or primary personality was 
morose and indolent, the other bright and cheer- 
ful. The secondary personality spoke of the 
other or normal self as a stranger or third per- 
son. An equally interesting case was that of 
Ansel Bourne, an evangelist who lived in Rhode 
Island. On January 17th, 1887, ne went to 
Providence to attend to some business. Having 
transacted his business, he went to Boston and 
from there to Morristown, Pa. Here he opened 

139 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

a small stationery store, living in the back part 
of it, which he had partitioned off for that pur- 
pose. In this business he was known as A. J. 
Brown. He remained there, running the 
store, until March 13th. On the night of 
that date, at the close of business, he re- 
tired as usual. On awakening the next 
morning from his night's sleep in the rear of 
his store, he found himself in what appeared 
to be a strange place. Thinking he had 
broken into the place, he went out into the hall 
and rapped on a door which he found. His 
landlord opened the door and said, "Good 
morning, Mr. Brown." " Where am I ?" asked 
Mr. Brown. "You are all right," replied his 
landlord. " I am all wrong, and my name is 
not Brown. Where am I ?" " You are in Mor- 
ristown." " Where is Morristown ?" " In Penn- 
sylvania." "What day of the month is it?" 
asked Mr. Brown. " The 14th," said the land- 
lord. " Does time run backward here? When 
I left home it was the 17th." "Seventeenth of 
what?" asked the landlord. "Now it is the 
14th of March." His relatives were commu- 
nicated with and he was taken back to Rhode 
Island. Everything that had happened to 
him while at Morristown was a blank in his 
memory. Dr. Richard Hodgson and Prof. 

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Psychical Research and Materialism. 

James, of Harvard, hearing of this case, in- 
vestigated it and had him put into a hypnotic 
trance, when he immediately became Brown, 
the other personality assuming full sway, and 
gave a detailed account of his journey to Mor- 
ristown and everything he did there until 
March 14th, when all again became blank. 
This was repeated several times with like re- 
sults. Each one of these personalities had its 
own chain of memories, beliefs and affections 
as complete as if it were a separate individual. 
These cases are given as illustrating the sub- 
ject of duplex-personality rather than the sub- 
ject of the " subliminal self;" but they exhibit a 
species of subconscious action of the mind 
which makes a very interesting study. 

In 1884, the Society for Psychical Research 
appointed a committee to investigate Theos- 
ophy, and particularly the claims of the so- 
called Adepts or Masters to the possession of 
superior powers over the material world and 
the forces of nature. The tales which were 
constantly floating through newspaper and 
magazine of the marvels occurring in India, 
and which seemed to have the support of in- 
telligent and credible witnesses, seemed to 
justify an investigation. The Theosophical 
Society was founded in New York in 1875 by 

141 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

H. S. Olcott and Mme. Blavatsky, the latter of 
whom was a native of Russia, and had at one 
time posed as a spiritual medium. She became 
famous as the High Priestess of Theosophy and 
authoress of that medley of ignorance and learn- 
ing, " Isis Unveiled." Theosophy soon had 
numerous votaries, among the most noted being 
A. P- Sinnett, who expounded the new philos- 
ophy in the " Occult World," published in 1881. 
Dr. Richard Hodgson, one of the committee 
appointed to investigate this subject, was sent 
to India to there personally prosecute the in- 
vestigation. Dr. Hodgson was well qualified 
both by nature and education for this work. 
Born in Australia, graduating in the University 
of Melbourne, where he took the degrees of 
M.A. and LL.D., he completed his education 
at the University of Cambridge, England, 
where he subsequently became lecturer on liter- 
ary and scientific subjects. He was one of the 
founders of the American branch of the So- 
ciety for Psychical Research, of which he was 
secretary, and, I believe, still occupies that po- 
sition. He has for years been an earnest, con- 
scientious and fearless worker in the field of 
Psychical Research. His mind is logical, his 
judgment judicial and cautious, and his meth- 
ods painstaking, critical and thorough. He 

142 



Psychical Research and Materialism. 

pursues an investigation carefully and exhaust- 
ively and without prepossessions for or against 
it, and when he arrives at the conclusion to which 
the facts point, he announces the result fear- 
lessly and with utter disregard of the storm of 
criticism that may be provoked thereby. The 
sarcasms and pleasantries of Prof. Miinster- 
berg and his class, about founding a theory of 
a future life on the gossip of an "abnormal 
woman," do not deter him from looking for 
facts even in the most obscure places, and 
placing on them what he considers their most 
reasonable interpretation, undaunted by the 
anathemas of so-called orthodox science and 
its self-sufficient champions. With him a fact 
is a fact, whether it comes in all the regal pomp 
and purple robes of orthodox science, stamped 
with due authority, or in humble garb and over 
hitherto unknown roads timidly asking for rec- 
ognition. He does not forget that the law of 
gravitation that welded into one coherent and 
orderly system all the celestial phenomena, and 
which made the Copernican conception of the 
universe possible, was announced by the simple 
fall of an apple. I may state, as throwing some 
light on his attitude on philosophical and scien- 
tific subjects, that Dr. Hodgson is an ardent 

i43 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

disciple of Herbert Spencer and believer in 
evolution. 

Dr. Hodgson accordingly proceeded to the 
headquarters of the Theosophical Society at 
Adyar, Madras, in India, where he soon dis- 
covered that most of the marvels were pro- 
duced by fraudulent means. The shrine, where 
the mystic rites were performed, contained 
elaborate secret arrangements for the produc- 
tion of these marvels. Back of the shrine was 
a secret panel, access to which was obtained 
through the adjoining room, which was occu- 
pied by Madame Blavatsky as a bed-room. 
This panel was concealed by a mirror. It ap- 
pears that Madame Blavatsky, assisted by con- 
federates, was the principal actor in the per- 
petration of these frauds. Letters containing 
instructions written in a mixture of French, 
Italian and English, for the perpetration of the 
frauds, were unearthed, and made the case 
against the Theosophists conclusive. Dr. 
Hodgson, on his return to England, wrote an 
exhaustive report of his investigations, which 
was read at the regular meeting of the society 
and printed in its published "Proceedings" 

I shall now devote some attention to that 
most perplexing psychological phenomenon of 
this century, or any century, I might say with- 

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Psychical Research and Materialism. 

out exaggeration, Mrs. Piper, of Boston, of 
whom I have before briefly spoken. I trust, 
when I tell you that she is what is commonly 
called a trance medium, in considering her case 
you will divest your mind of any preconceived 
notions on that subject, and forget for the time, 
that large class of persons who prey upon the 
credulity of the public under that name. It 
has been almost fifteen years since Mrs. Piper 
became known to the public as being subject 
to an abnormal trance condition into which she 
enters voluntarily, and during which she loses 
consciousness, her organism being then used 
by other seeming personalities who claim to 
be the spirits of deceased persons. Her vocal 
organs will sometimes be used by one per- 
sonality while each of her hands will be used 
by another to write messages, all simultane- 
ously and with different persons on different 
subjects. She was introduced to the notice of 
Dr. Hodgson some ten years ago by Prof. 
William James, of Harvard. Dr. Hodgson 
has made a careful study of her case covering 
a period of ten years, during which time he 
has taken or sent hundreds of persons to see 
her under fictitious names, to nearly all of 
whom, in her trance condition, she has given 
names of relatives and friends, living and de- 

145 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

ceased, incidents of domestic and personal his- 
tory of the most intimate and confidential 
character, and otherwise exhibited the pos- 
session of what some of the scientific men 
who examined her cautiously called "super- 
normal power of acquiring information." 
Fraud, as a possible explanation of her 
powers, is entirely out of the question, as no 
amount of watching by skilled detectives has 
ever resulted in bringing to light anything in 
the slightest degree justifying such a solution, 
even if the suspicion were not repelled by the 
upright character, daily demeanor and associa- 
tions of the lady. Until recently, a trance per- 
sonality calling himself Phinuit, purporting to 
have been a French doctor, acted in most 
cases as intermediary, using Mrs. Piper's voice 
while entranced and delivering messages to 
the "sitter" from spirits of relatives, who he 
claimed were there and unable to control the 
vocal organs of Mrs. Piper. Occasionally a 
personality would use Mrs. Piper's voice and 
talk without the intervention of Phinuit, in 
which case many of the emotional and mental 
characteristics of the person, as known during 
life, were discernible. 

One of the principal objections to consider- 
ing these personalities as "spirits," or to be 

146 



Psychical Research and Materialism. 

accurate, the principal difficulty in regarding 
Phinuit as the spirit of a once living person, 
is the fact that no amount of investigation has 
enabled those interested to find any trace of 
such a person ever having lived in France. 
Diligent inquiries were prosecuted without 
avail. Phinuit's French is such as an Amer- 
ican would speak. In communicating he has 
frequently been caught fishing for information. 
He shows some knowledge of medicine, his 
diagnoses being generally correct. It may be 
stated, however, once for all, whatever Phinuit 
may be, whether a fragment of Mrs. Piper's 
consciousness or a spirit, she knows nothing 
whatever of what he says or does except by 
report after coming from her trance. 

Sometime in 1892, a personality purporting 
to be the spirit of a friend of Dr. Hodgson, 
who had recently been killed by an accident 
in New York, commenced controlling Mrs. 
Piper. During life he was devoted to intel- 
lectual pursuits, and he and Dr. Hodgson had 
frequently discussed questions of science and 
philosophy. Dr. Hodgson speaks of him in his 
report on Mrs. Piper's case as George Pelham, 
that being a fictitious name adopted to hide his 
identity from the public. The Pelham person- 
ality disclosed such a detailed knowledge of 

147 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

things of which no other living person knew 
anything, such as confidential conversations 
with Dr. Hodgson, and the most intimate fam- 
ily matters unknown outside of his immediate 
family, that Dr. Hodgson has been gradually 
driven to adopt what he calls the "spirit hy- 
pothesis " in explanation of the phenomena. 
This conclusion he unhesitatingly announces 
in his exhaustive report printed in the thir- 
teenth volume of the "Proceedings" in which 
he considers the various explanations here- 
tofore advanced, and rejects them as being 
inadequate to account for the facts, and gives 
his reasons for inclining to the spiritistic hy- 
pothesis. He considers telepathy or thought- 
transference, from the minds of the sitters or 
distant persons to the mind of Mrs. Piper 
while entranced, as unsatisfactory; inasmuch 
as much of the information coming from the 
trance personalities is unknown to the sitters. 
In some cases it contradicts what was in their 
minds, and only a subsequent reference to fam- 
ily records or other sources of information, 
proves it to be correct. 

Telepathy relates to the sources of informa- 
tion, but does not attempt to -account for the 
various personalities manifesting themselves. 
These are supposed, by some persons who 

148 



Psychical Research and Materialism. 

have studied the matter, to be fragments of 
Mrs. Piper's own mind which act the role 
of spirits of deceased persons unknown to 
Mrs. Piper's waking consciousness. But these 
personalities have of late years become so 
numerous, each with its own chain of mem- 
ories, incidents, emotions and characteristics, 
in many cases such as the person possessed 
while in the body, always when communicat- 
ing appearing the same, that Dr. Hodgson 
says he is unable to regard them as so many 
fragments of Mrs. Piper's mind. 

In November, 1889, Mrs. Piper visited Eng- 
land at the request of the Society for Psychi- 
cal Research. There she gave a series of 
sittings under the supervision of Dr. Walter 
Leaf, Professor Lodge and Mr. Myers, all of 
whom became convinced that she had super- 
normal powers of acquiring information, but 
did not agree as to the explanation of the 
phenomena. Dr. Walter Leaf adopted the 
theory that Dr. Phinuit was a "secondary per- 
sonality, assuming the name and acting the 
part with the consistency and aptitude which 
is shown by secondary personalities in other 
known cases," and that the information given 
was obtained from the sitters by thought- 
transference. Professor Lodge, however, con- 

149 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

sidered this explanation insufficient and as- 
serted, to quote his own language, that "telep- 
athy from distant persons, if that is in any way 
feasible, telepathy from deceased persons as a 
last resort, but telepathy of some kind, as dis- 
tinct from any conceivable method of extract- 
ing information from persons present," was 
the necessary inference to be drawn from her 
case. 

In order to account for the information dis- 
played by Mrs. Piper's trance personalities, 
those who are disposed to ascribe it to thought- 
transference are forced to stretch telepathy to 
the breaking point. Much of the information 
given is not in the conscious recollection of 
the sitters, and in some instances information 
is conveyed of which the sitters never had any 
knowledge whatever ; it then becomes neces- 
sary to assume that the information was in the 
mind of some distant person, from whose mind 
it was obtained by Mrs. Piper while entranced. 
They do not tell us, however, how Mrs. Piper's 
mind is able to find, from the many millions of 
minds, what particular mind has the requisite 
information — in other words, how she comes 
into rapport with that mind. In following this 
method and in adopting this explanation, they 
say that they are reasoning from the known 

150 



Psychical Research and Materialism. 

to the unknown, and are acting in accordance 
with scientific methods. Thought-transference 
having an experimental basis, in accounting for 
Mrs. Piper's trance phenomena by reference to 
it, they introduce no new hypothesis into the field 
of investigation. It is only, they assert, after 
having exhausted every other explanation, how- 
ever improbable or far-fetched, that we are jus- 
tified in resorting to the agency of the dead. 
I omitted to state, as I should, in fairness, 
that names and information are not always 
correctly given. Dr. Hodgson, however, re- 
gards this as strengthening his view instead of 
discrediting it. He calls attention to the diffi- 
culties of communicating through a strange 
organism in which the message is communi- 
cated by being thought out, and in which every- 
thing, however irrelevant, that passes through 
the communicator's mind, tends to be registered 
in the writing or speech. He says that the 
very limitations and failures of the communica- 
tions coming through Mrs. Piper are such as 
he should expect if they were what they prima 
facie appear to be — namely, messages from 
the spirits of deceased persons. Understand, 
Dr. Hodgson advances this view very cau- 
tiously, with full appreciation of its transcend- 
ent significance to mankind, and not in a spirit 

151 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

of dogmatism. Nor is he influenced, he affirms, 
by sentimental or emotional considerations in 
arriving at this conclusion, but solely by the 
facts. 

Prof. James Hyslop, of Columbia Univer- 
sity, and Prof. Romaine Newbold, of Pennsyl- 
vania University, have had a number of sittings 
with Mrs. Piper in recent years. Prof. Hyslop 
inclines to the "spiritistic hypothesis," as shown 
by his recent papers on the subject published 
in The Independent. Prof. Newbold's report, in 
which his experiences are described, appears 
in the fourteenth volume of the "Proceedings" 
of the Society for Psychical Research, and 
forms part of the more elaborate report of Dr. 
Richard Hodgson on the same subject. While 
Prof. Newbold found much in Mrs. Piper's 
case that he was unable to explain, even on 
the far-fetched theory of telepathy from the 
minds of distant living persons, he also found 
much that, in his opinion, was irreconcilable 
with the "spiritistic hypothesis." Dr. Hodg- 
son's report on this remarkable case will be 
continued in future numbers of the "Proceed- 
ings" when more light may be expected on 
the subject. 

We now come to a consideration of the 
question of what bearing the facts disclosed 

152 



Psychical Research and Materialism. 

by Psychical Research have on modern ma- 
terialism. I do not think any of us ought to 
dogmatize on this subject, but our attitude 
should be one of receptiveness, of hospitality 
to all facts, however humble or strange the 
garb in which they may appear. I will there- 
fore content myself by saying, that it seems to 
me that the fundamental postulate of material- 
ism, namely, that mind and brain are indisso- 
lubly connected, and that the mind is confined 
in its operations to the material organism, has 
been shaken, if not overthrown, by telepathy 
and cognate facts. Or, may we go a step fur- 
ther, and say that as the mind can act at a dis- 
tance from, if not independently of the body, 
may it not be possible that it survives the de- 
struction of the physical body? It must be 
conceded that every mental change is preceded 
or accompanied by a physical change — in a 
word, that mind appears to have a purely 
physical basis. But it is not possible that when 
molecular action in the brain or nervous sys- 
tem accompanies mental action, that it is simply 
a concomitance of physical change with men- 
tal change, and that the relation between these 
changes is not one of cause and effect. We 
have no right to assume dogmatically that such 
is the relation. 

i53 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

The materialism represented by such think- 
ers as Biichner, and expressed by his famous 
dictum, " Ohne Phosphor kein gedanke," 
— " without phosphorus no thought" — has 
been seriously discredited by the facts brought 
to light by Psychical Research. To say that 
nothing can be positively known about a future 
life, that the subject is not amenable to scientific 
treatment, is begging the question. We have 
obtained all our knowledge by the slow, labo- 
rious methods of science, and if we are ever to 
know anything definite on this momentous 
subject, it must come by the same methods ot 
observation and experiment so fruitful in other 
fields of scientific research. 

The founding of the Society for Psychical Re- 
search marks an epoch in the history of scien- 
tific research. Prior to the organization of 
that society no continuous, systematic effort, by 
scientific methods, had been made to solve 
the problem of a future life. The field had 
been abandoned to theology, metaphysics, and 
superstition mongers, with the result that we 
were, twenty years ago, no further advanced 
than in the days of Plato. A vast mass of un- 
sifted, ill-attested facts, that seldom reached a 
higher level than anecdote, but which seemed 
to have some bearing on the question of the 

154 



Psychical Research and Materialism. 

survival of human consciousness, had been ac- 
cumulated. These facts often suggested to 
candid minds the question whether, to use a 
common metaphor, there was not some fire 
where there was so much smoke. It remained 
for the conscientious and painstaking labors of 
this society to discover that there was a good 
deal of fire. There are many — probably the 
larger part of the reading, thinking public — 
who still declare that there is no fire — that it is 
all an illusion. In this movement History is 
simply repeating itself. It is the old story of 
ignorant, dogmatic denial that has always 
greeted every discovery in the past, to be fol- 
lowed later by grudging acquiescence, and 
finally by complete acceptance. 

Those scientific men, like Prof. Miinster- 
berg, of Harvard, who still refuse to examine 
the facts collected by the Society for Psychical 
Research, because they consider those facts 
a priori impossible, are in the unenviable posi- 
tion of those priests who refused to verify the 
existence of Jupiter's moons by looking through 
Galileo's telescope, alleging that the exist- 
ence of other worlds was contrary to Scrip- 
ture. 

How changed the universe we look upon to- 
day, from that of old. There are, indeed, the 

i55 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

same stars that guided the mariner's course, 
and upon which the Chaldean shepherds gazed, 
in veneration and awe, centuries ago ! The 
same moon circles around the earth that shed 
her silvery radiance upon the Garden of Geth- 
semane and the walls of Jerusalem as in the days 
of Christ ! The same sun daily marks the be- 
ginning of human toil, lights up palace and 
cottage, and sheds his glory on hill and valley, 
worshiped by the Persians of old ! Nightly we 
gaze upon the same constellations, forever wheel- 
ing through space to some unknown and far-off 
destination, under which Socrates and Plato 
pondered the same great question of "whence 
and whither," that baffles the philosophers of 
to-day. There stands the same Sphinx in soli- 
tary grandeur, upon which the Pleiades looked 
down four thousand years ago ; the same Sphinx 
that witnessed the rise and fall of Roman and 
Grecian civilization ; the emblem of time and 
eternity, the riddle of the ages ! But all else 
how changed ! The universe is no longer the 
insignificant universe of Ptolemy, of which the 
earth was the center and the stars but little 
lights set in the firmament — all created by a 
personal God for man's sole benefit — but the 
vast immeasurable Cosmos of Copernicus and 
Galileo, abounding in planets and systems of 

156 



Psychical Research and Materialism. 

planets, suns and systems of suns, all revolv- 
ing around some unknown center, in obedience 
to eternal law. And when we turn our atten- 
tion to the earth, we find equally marvelous 
changes. The geologist has penetrated the 
bowels of the earth, and wrested therefrom the 
secrets of its history — deciphered from the 
rocky record the story of man's progress 
through fish, and bird, and mammal, to the 
grandeur of a Shakespeare and a Bacon. 
When we survey the world of thought and 
speculation, what a revolution has been 
wrought by the genius of Herbert Spencer 
and Charles Darwin ! Herbert Spencer has 
exhibited to us the world of phenomena, phys- 
ical, moral, intellectual, aesthetic — in a word, 
the entire Cosmos — as an orderly succession 
of events, a development of cell to fish, of fish 
to bird, of bird to mammal, of mammal to man ; 
of nebula to sun, of family to tribe, of tribe to 
state ; of inarticulate animal cries expressing 
animal desires, to human speech expressing 
the profound speculations of a Newton and 
the sublime emotions of a Milton; of the 
rude music of savages to the sublime har- 
monies of a Beethoven or a Mozart ; of sav- 
age superstition, in which animals were wor- 

i57 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

shiped, to the noble religion of the Golden 
Rule. 

No previous century has witnessed such 
enormous advances as science has made in the 
closing years of this century. Has she a still 
greater boon in store for mankind? Is the 
crowning achievement of this century to be 
scientific proof of immortality? Or have all 
the discoveries that science has made in this 
century only led, step by step, to the more cer- 
tain conviction that death ends all? Who 
shall say? 

"Are God and Nature then at strife, 

That Nature lends such evil dreams ? 
So careful of the type she seems, 
So careless of the single life ; 

"That I, considering everywhere 

Her secret meaning in her deeds, 
And finding that of fifty seeds 
She often brings but one to bear, 

' ' I falter where I firmly trod, 

And falling with my weight of cares 
Upon the great world's altar-stairs 
That slope thro' darkness up to God, 

" I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, 
And gather dust and chaff, and call 
To what I feel is Lord of all, 
And faintly trust the larger hope. 

158 



Psychical Research and Materialism. 

" 'So careful of the type?' but no. 

From scarped cliff and quarried stone 
She cries, 'A thousand types are gone; 
I care for nothing, all shall go. 

"Thou makest thine appeal to me : 
I bring to life, I bring to death : 
The spirit does but mean the breath : 
I know no more.' And he, shall he, 

" Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair, 
Such splendid purpose in his eyes, 
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies, 
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer; 

"Who trusted God was love indeed, 
And love Creation's final law, — 
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw 
With ravin, shriek'd against his creed, — 

"Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills, 
Who battled for the True, the Just, 
Be blown about the desert dust, 
Or seal'd within the iron hills ? 

"No more? A monster then, a dream, 
A discord. Dragons of the prime, 
That tear each other in their slime, 
Were mellow music match'd with him. 

" O life as futile, then, as frail ! 

O for thy voice to soothe and bless ! 
What hope of answer, or redress? 
Behind the veil, behind the veil." 

159 



SOME FACTS ABOUT SPIRITUALISM. 



Since the publication of the report of the 
Seybert Commission, in 1887, the popular in- 
terest in the subject of Spiritualism has been 
on the wane. This was owing, probably, to 
the rival claims of Theosophy, as well as to 
the adverse character of the Seybert report, 
added to a growing tendency in the popular 
mind to materialism resulting from the latter- 
day discoveries of physical science, and that 
fierce industrial struggle for existence that ab- 
sorbs all of our energies and occupies us ex- 
clusively with the affairs of this world. The 
average man had little time to devote to an 
inquiry into spiritual existence; he was more 
concerned with the practical problem of how 
to keep body and soul together in the present 
life. He was content to let the future take 
care of itself, so long as his present means ot 
life were secure. Thus, the social and eco- 
nomic problems have been displacing the re- 
ligious questions ; the membership of the eco- 
nomic clubs has been constantly on the increase, 
while that of the churches has been diminish- 

160 



Some Facts about Spiritualism. 

ing, and the ministers have been forced to mix 

a little sweet with the bitters of Theology, to 

make it more palatable to the taste. 

Moreover, if the future life was to be but a 

continuation of this life, with its pains and 

evils, there arose in most minds a serious 

doubt of its desirability. Religion, with its 

vague promise of a happier life, where the 

evils of this life were to be adjusted, 

"Some safer world in depth of woods embraced, 
Some happier island in the watery waste," 

had lost its hold on the average man. He 
still continued to attend church, either from 
social or business motives, or from force of 
habit, but belief in its dogmas had degener- 
ated into a mere verbal assent, a lip-service, 
as it were, which had no more vitality in it 
than the Egyptian mummies from which life 
had departed centuries ago. Religion, with 
most of its professors, had become a mere me- 
chanical bending of the knee, a perfunctory 
moving of the lips, as devoid of force and 
meaning as the fingering of the rosary by the 
Catholic. Then, again, Science had done much 
which at first sight appeared to discredit man's 
hope of a future life. Copernicus and Galileo, 
by their discoveries in astronomy, had de- 
stroyed the Biblical myth which represented 

161 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

the earth as the center of the universe and 
man as the aim and end of creation. 

Darwin's theory of man's descent from lower 
forms of life placed man in the position of a 
more highly developed animal, instead of a 
perfect being created by an anthropomorphic 
God, and showed that the difference between 
the mind of man and that of the higher ani- 
mals was quantitative instead of qualitative. 
That man, instead of coming into existence in 
obedience to the fiat of omnipotence, endowed 
with an immortal soul, was the product of 
countless ages of evolution, bearing yet on his 
body the indelible marks of his lowly origin. 
Medical science had shown the intimate, if 
not indissoluble connection of the mind and 
brain, thus striking another blow at the dual 
theory of man's nature. These various causes 
have contributed to the decline in the interest 
in the problem of another life. Finally, among 
the causes that have co-operated in producing 
this lack of interest in Spiritualism, might also 
be reckoned the conclusions reached by the So- 
ciety for Psychical Research. For, while many 
of the subjective phenomena, such as clairvoy- 
ance, automatic writing and trance utterance, 
have been found to have some basis in fact, 
they have been traced to non-spiritual sources ; 

162 



Some Facts about Spiritualism. 

while, on the other hand, the so-called phys- 
ical phenomena have rarely been found to 
stand the test of rigid scrutiny or scientific 
proof. 

The flood of rationalism that followed the dis- 
coveries of physical science in the last half of 
the nineteenth century, especially those asso- 
ciated with the names of Darwin, Huxley, 
Spencer and Lyell and with a host of lesser 
names, did much to complete the destruction of 
theological beliefs which had already become ar- 
chaic owing to causes which had been in oper- 
ation since the days of Luther and the Protes- 
tant Reformation. Silently and imperceptibly, 
the intellectual and industrial influences, stirred 
into activity by the invention of printing, 
sapped away the vitality of medieval theology. 
The principle of private judgment enunciated 
by Luther, carried to its logical conclusions, 
discredited all mere ecclesiastical authority, 
and resulted in the rejection of all beliefs that 
failed to stand the test of reason ; and the in- 
tellectual revolt that commenced with a denial 
by Luther of the right of the Pope to sell in- 
dulgences, had its culmination in the rejection 
of dogmas that had, from the earliest days of 
the Church, been regarded as an essential 
part of Christian theology. 

163 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

The doctrine of a future life had been so in- 
timately associated with the whole body of re- 
ligious belief, and appeared to be such an 
essential part of it, that it did not escape the 
general decadence that overtook religious doc- 
trines. Certainly there continued to be an 
assent, more formal than real, to the old order 
of ideas, but the undercurrent of unbelief was 
profound and widespread, though seldom 
avowed and aggressive. 

It was during this period of mental transition, 
when incense was still being offered, in a per- 
functory way, to the old idols, while ingenious 
theologians were occupied in endeavoring to 
twist Scripture into harmony with Science, and 
while the illusions of the old theology were 
slowly dissolving like beautiful fairy tales and 
leaving a feeling of void in the hearts of that 
large class of persons in whom the emotions 
dominate the intellect, that modern Spiritualism 
challenged the attention of the thinking world. 

Modern Spiritualism made its appearance 
and appealed, not to miracles supposed to have 
occurred nearly two thousand years ago in a 
remote part of the world, but to phenomena 
that were said to be occurring around us every 
day, and which we were asked to believe, 
not at the command of Pope, priest or Bible, 

164 



Some Facts about Spiritualism. 

but on the evidence of our own senses. We 
were asked to investigate and believe, not to 
have faith and believe. 

It is the boast of the Spiritualists that their 
peculiar belief had a birth as humble as that of 
the founder of Christianity, being ushered into 
life in 1848 by what were known as the 
" Rochester rappings." It soon spread all 
over the civilized world, the claim being made 
that it numbered millions among its converts, 
including crowned heads and scientific men, as 
well as the lowly. Among its believers, it was 
claimed, could be found such names as Judge 
Edmonds ; Professor De Morgan, the eminent 
English mathematician, whose wife published 
the results of their joint investigations in a 
book entitled " From Matter to Spirit" ; Wm. 
Howitt, the distinguished literary man and 
author of the "History of the Supernatural"; 
Professor William Crookes and Alfred R. Wal- 
lace, the former of whom gave the results, in 
" Researches in Spiritualism," of certain ex- 
periments conducted with the famous medium, 
D. D. Home, with the aid of scientifically con- 
structed instruments, and which seemed to con- 
clusively establish the existence of a force hith- 
erto unrecognized by orthodox science. Wal- 
lace, who had distinguished himself and earned 

165 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

recognition with Charles Darwin by his labors 
in the field of natural history, came well-nigh for- 
feiting the respect of his scientific contempo- 
raries by entering into the heated controversy 
then prevailing, as the champion of the Spirit- 
ualists. He published his " Miracles and Mod- 
ern Spiritualism," which must be conceded to 
be a complete exposure of the fallacy of the 
"argument from experience," which the great 
skeptic Hume had hurled, over a century ago, 
at the belief in miracles. The work of Wal- 
lace was a piece of dialectics of which the 
Spiritualists were justly proud. According to 
Hume's argument miracles were opposed to 
the uniform experience of mankind ; therefore, 
what had the uniform experience of mankind 
against it, could not happen. The fallacy of 
his reasoning is sufficiently shown when we 
remember that every new fact — such, for in- 
stance, as the telephone, X-ray or phonograph 
— has had the uniform experience of mankind 
against its possibility. Wallace declared that 
the negative experience of mankind could not 
outweigh the affirmative testimony of disin- 
terested, intelligent and competent witnesses 
to a fact, however improbable the fact. This 
was the argument of Wallace, briefly and fa- 
miliarly stated. 

1 66 



Some Facts about Spiritualism. 

To the names already mentioned might be 
added those of Dr. Robert Hare, Professor of 
Chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania, 
who claimed to have obtained communications 
from the spirit world with an apparatus es- 
pecially designed for that purpose ; Edward W. 
Cox, the eminent English lawyer, who claimed 
to have thoroughly tested, at his own home, 
the alleged supernormal powers of D. D. 
Home, the results of his experiments being 
given to the public in his works, "Mechanism 
of Man" and " Spiritualism Answered by Sci- 
ence." In the last named work, Cox undertook 
to account for the phenomena by referring them 
to the operation of a new force in nature, to 
which he gave the name "psychic force." I 
shall conclude this list of names of eminent 
Spiritualists with that of Robert Dale Owen, 
whose " Footfalls on the Boundary of Another 
World" and "Debatable Land," were at one 
time standard authorities in Spiritualistic lit- 
erature. At one time the periodicals advo- 
cating Spiritualism numbered upwards of a 
hundred, issued weekly or monthly. 

The lecture field was soon crowded with lec- 
turers who, week after week, poured forth tor- 
rents of bombast that passed as inspired elo- 
quence among the credulous disciples of the 

167 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

new dispensation. These lecturers usually 
claimed to be inspired by the spirit of some 
great man. Theodore Parker and Thomas 
Paine seemed to be great favorites with them, 
and appeared to occupy most their time in de- 
livering addresses that were noted chiefly for 
lack of ideas, abundance of high-sounding 
words and bad grammar. 

These orators, inspired by the cream of the 
intellect of the spirit world, would tell us all 
about the beauties of the Summerland, the oc- 
cupation of the spirits, and the constitution of 
the spheres ; they would even venture to tell 
us about the inhabitants of Jupiter or some 
other member of the solar system; or, when 
laboring under the influence of some very 
exalted spirit, they would soar to the far-off 
milky way or penetrate into prehistoric times 
and tell us about the mound builders or the lost 
tribe of Israel, or they would give us informa- 
tion on some equally obscure question, but not 
one item of information would they vouchsafe 
on anything that could be verified, not one jot 
of information did they ever convey that was 
of any practical use to mankind. One of the 
best-known of these so-called inspirational 
speakers was Mrs. Cora L. V. Tappan-Rich- 
mond, these various names representing, I sup- 

168 



Some Facts about Spiritualism. 

pose, the various stages in her matrimonial 
career so peculiar to spiritual mediums. 

The spirits sometimes wrote doggerel that 
passed for poetry among the faithful. The 
story, " Edwin Druid," which was left unfin- 
ished by Dickens' death, was completed by the 
spirits who used a medium as an amanuensis, 
and the resemblance to Dickens' other literary 
works was said to be so striking as to leave 
little doubt in the minds of the Spiritualists that 
it was truly what it claimed to be. " Nature's 
Divine Revelations" was the lofty title of an 
ambitious work published in 1848, having 
been previously delivered to a select few in a 
series of lectures. Andrew Jackson Davis, an 
illiterate shoemaker, subsequently known as 
the " Poughkeepsie Seer," was the instru- 
ment through whom it was communicated while 
in a trance mesmerically induced. It has been 
surmised by critics that the work was the pro- 
duction of a man named Wm. Fishbough, who 
used the " unsophisticated youth," as he called 
Davis, as the innocent instrument of his gigan- 
tic deception. Some critics characterized the 
work as a conglomeration of Fourierism, St. 
Simeonism, Swedenborgism and Spinozism, 
and intimated that the author, in producing it, 
had laid under tribute every infidel writer from 

169 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

Aristotle down to La Place. Davis might 
aptly be called a nineteenth century edition of 
Swedenborg. His voluminous works, written 
in the usual diffuse style that is sometimes mis- 
taken for eloquence, were at one time high 
authorities on questions of Spiritualistic faith. 

Davis and his works have shared the same 
fate that has overtaken Spiritualistic literature 
in general — they have fallen into " innocuous 
desuetude." 

The mercenary soon found an immense field 
in the credulity fostered by Spiritualism, and 
fraudulent mediums sprang up like noxious 
weeds, and carried on a lucrative business, 
their only capital being unlimited impudence 
and a few clumsily performed tricks. The cre- 
dulity exhibited by the average Spiritualist on 
his hobby, was a psychological marvel to which 
history furnishes no parallel since the epidemic 
of superstition that prevailed in the Middle 
Ages. Any vulgar impostor claiming to be a 
medium secured a ready passport to the confi- 
dence of the Spiritualist, who immediately be- 
came blind to all evidence of fraud. If caught 
in the act he might confidently count on the 
enthusiastic support of all good Spiritualists ; 
nay, more, his name was inscribed on the roll 
of martyred mediums, and subscriptions were 

170 



Some Facts about Spiritualism. 

set on foot for his benefit. No explanation to 
account for the suspicious circumstances under 
which he was caught was too preposterous for 
the confirmed Spiritualist — his was a case of 
hopeless insanity on the subject. He simply 
hugged his delusion the closer. 

Some years ago Mrs. Mellon was one of the 
most successful materializing mediums in Eng- 
land, and was so clever in her peculiar line 
— her specialty to use a mercantile expression — 
that she long escaped detection. One of the 
common features of her seances was the ap- 
pearance of the spirit form of a little girl fa- 
miliarly called "Sissy," who would walk out 
among the audience and eat candy handed to 
her by some of the frolicsome spectators. One 
evening, while in the act of taking candy, 
"Sissy" was suddenly seized, and, the lights 
being turned on, Mrs. Mellon, the medium, 
was found on her knees, having come from the 
cabinet in that position, personating " Sissy." 
A false beard, pieces of linen and other acces- 
sories were found on her person, and her shoes 
and stockings were discovered in the cabinet. 
Mrs. Mellon explained that " Sissy" was made 
up of matter drawn from her own physical 
organism, and that when "Sissy" dematerial- 
ized her form returned to the medium's or- 

171 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

ganism. When " Sissy" was seized, she was 
unable to return and be absorbed into Mrs. 
Mellon's body, so the medium was compelled 
to go to her, which she did instantaneously, 
and thus the spectators found her on her knees, 
"Sissy" having been absorbed into her body. 
As to the false beard found in her bosom, it 
was well known that ladies used it for certain 
purposes which delicacy prevented her from 
fully explaining. The presence of her shoes 
and stockings in the cabinet she explained by 
saying that " Sissy," in making up her spirit 
form, drew on the lower limbs of the medium 
to such an extent that they shrank and allowed 
the shoes and stockings to drop off. The 
Spiritualists not only adopted this explanation, 
but elaborated it. 

Then, again, the spirit world is full of evil 
spirits, who delight in playing pranks on us 
poor mortals, and personating other good spir- 
its and delivering messages in their names ; so 
that when the medium is caught in trickery, the 
evil spirits are used as scapegoats. The 
medium is not guilty of trickery ; no, it is 
these bad spirits who do the mischief, They 
seem to loaf about the spirit world waiting for 
an opportunity to gratify their evil propensi- 
ties. They have even been known to enter a 

172 



Some Facts about Spiritualism. 

medium to get drunk. If a skeptic goes to a 
seance intent on detecting fraud, he draws 
these spirits by the mysterious law of affinity, 
and he is made the subject of their pranks. 

There are various phases of mediumship. 
There is the clairvoyant, who, in a deep 
trance, gives you a description of some spirit 
friend in such general terms that it will fit al- 
most any one, and asks you if you recognize 
the name of Mary, Carrie, Lucy, etc. Unless 
you are a skeptic, and proof against convic- 
tion, you certainly will remember some one 
bearing one of these names. I attended a 
seance at which a spirit announcing herself as 
Mrs. Smith was recognized. It was a remark- 
able test, remarkable ! After receiving a lot 
of information from these spirits of no value 
to any one, should we venture to ask for the 
full name of the communicating spirit, we are 
told it is too weak, and must depart. I have 
always considered the credulity that could swal- 
low such stuff as the most wonderful part of 
the whole performance. 

I often found that the spirits were very talk- 
ative on generalities, giving such choice bits of 
information as "you are going to make a 
change," or "you will shortly receive a letter," 
but when asked for information of which they 

i73 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

were presumably ignorant, they invariably took 
refuge in sudden and unceremonious depar- 
ture. Occasionally the spirits adopted the role 
of questioners, and did a little fishing on their 
own account, using a kind of drag net for the 
purpose, when the following conversation 
would take place: 

The medium : " I get the name of Harry, or 
Mary, or something like that; does any one 
recognize the spirit?" An old lady present: 
"It's Carrie; yes, I recognize. Has she any 
message?" The medium: "She says she is 
happy, and that there is a change in prospect 
for you." Old lady: "Thanks, dear spirit." 
"Can she tell me what caused her death?" 
asks the old lady. " Some trouble up here," 
replies the medium, with an upward gesture 
that takes in the abdomen, chest and head. 
"Was it the heart?" suggests the old lady. 
"Yes, her heart; but her trouble is over now." 
" Good bye, dear spirit, good bye." I submit 
this as an unvarnished description of what 
daily takes place at these seances. 

Some time ago, while in the store of Mr. 
Wilms, I met an elderly gentleman, who came 
to tell Mr. Wilms of the marvelous table-tip- 
ping produced by his wife. The mercenary 
motives to deception being absent — for she 

i74 



Some Facts about Spiritualism. 

made no charge — it was decided that I should 
make a preliminary visit to her, a sort of skir- 
mishing expedition, and if I found the enemy 
strongly intrenched, Mr. Wilms, the veteran 
demolisher of ghosts, should visit the field of 
action in person, and rout the enemy. So, 
being armed, as usual, with my two eyes, I 
proceeded to the lady's house, thinking on my 
way thither that possibly I had at last found 
the genuine article of which I had seen so 
many base imitations. Arrived at the house, 
I ascended two flights of stairs, and found my- 
self in the humbly furnished apartments of the 
table-tipper. She proved to be a rather spare 
lady of sixty, or thereabouts, anything but 
ghostly looking. She required some persua- 
sion to exhibit her wonderful psychic powers ; 
but finally consenting, sat down beside a large 
oak extension table, resting both of her hands, 
palms downward, on the upper surface thereof. 
I sat in a chair about three feet away, with 
my eyes fastened on the field of operations. 
After some preliminary creaking, the table be- 
gan to move, first slowly and cautiously, then 
violently, on the castors with which its legs 
were armed. The movement was forward, 
then backward toward the medium. I quietly 
noted that when the table was pushed for- 

i75 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

ward, her hands showed that she was impart- 
ing the push, and that when it came back in her 
direction, the muscles of her hands were 
strained in the same direction. The only way 
in which the table tilted — that is, rose from the 
floor — was at the opposite end, the spirits, 
though urgently requested to do so, obstinately 
refusing to raise the end on which her hands 
rested. To test the matter thoroughly, and 
thus remove any suspicion of fraud, I requested 
that the table be moved in a way that could 
not be accomplished by the medium without 
changing the position of her hands. Again 
the spirits became refractory, and the effort 
had to be abandoned. The husband, who 
stood by, a silent and awe-stricken spectator 
of his wife's superhuman powers, asked me if 
I did not think it wonderful. Politeness, in 
the house to which I had been invited to wit- 
ness an exhibition of psychic power, prevented 
me from expressing my opinion; my mental 
comment, however, was, that the most won- 
derful part of the performance was the wo- 
man's collossal impudence and the man's 
boundless credulity. I had added another 
chapter to my study of human nature. 

In this case, the medium had no pecuniary 
motive to practice deception, but was probably 

176 



Some Facts about Spiritualism. 

actuated by a desire to excite wonder and at- 
tract attention to herself. I believe that Mad- 
ame Blavatsky was largely influenced by these 
vulgar motives in the systematic frauds prac- 
ticed by her in the name of Theosophy. 

Having received a glowing description of the 
marvels performed by an Indianapolis medium, 
I determined to call on her, if I should ever 
visit that city. I was told by my informant 
that this wonderful medium could not only pro- 
duce so-called slate writing that would con- 
vince the most skeptical, but that the spirits 
would communicate with you, with their own 
voices, in the full light, and in a manner that 
would leave no room for doubt even in the 
mind of a gentleman like our friend, Mr. 
Wilms. In short, that there was no way to 
account for what was produced through her 
mediumship except by reference to spirit 
agency. 

Having occasion, shortly after, to visit Indian- 
apolis, I proceeded to the residence of this me- 
dium, armed only with my eyes and some little 
experience in the line of unmasking bogus 
mediums. After a few minutes' ride on the 
electric car, I arrived at her home, a modest 
two-story frame. My summons was answered 
by a stout lady about thirty-five years old, 

177 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

who announced herself as the lady for whom I 
inquired. After scrutinizing me through the 
screen door, she stated, before I had disclosed 
the object of my visit, that she gave no "sit- 
tings" on Sunday. Suspecting that she was 
trying to determine whether I was a Spiritual- 
ist, I assumed a very dreamy, Spiritualistic look, 
inwardly wishing that my hair was a trifle 
longer. This had a magical effect, for she 
thereupon invited me to enter, stating that her 
fee would be two dollars, to which I cheerfully 
assented, mentally resolving that I would not 
pay her a cent, if I detected her in trickery. 
Walking into a neatly and tastefully furnished 
double parlor divided by folding doors, I sat 
down, and noted the evidences of culture and 
refinement in the surroundings in the form ot 
books, pictures and bric-a-brac. 

The medium having excused herself for a few 
minutes, my eyes roamed around the room in 
search of contrivances to aid the spirits in ma- 
terializing, but finding such a multiplicity of 
objects in the room, I gave up the effort in de- 
spair. While wondering whether beings so 
ethereal as spirits would manifest themselves 
amid such mundane surroundings, the lady ap- 
peared, attired in a clean wrapper. She evi- 
dently had some misgivings about me, for, as 

178 



Soma Facts about Spiritualism. 

she moved about the room arranging things 
for the seance, she cast apprehensive glances 
towards me, while I tried to disarm suspicion 
by looking as meek and gullible as possible. 

Presently, everything being arranged, she 
produced from the back parlor an old center 
table, and earnestly requested me to thoroughly 
examine the same. This looked fair and cal- 
culated to invite confidence, but I remembered 
that all tricksters allow you to examine their 
paraphernalia, always carefully concealing from 
your inspection the point where the trick comes 
in. I found it a very simple, innocent-looking 
affair, with nothing suspicious about it, except 
a slot about six inches long by three wide, in 
the side. I noted that she turned the side with 
the slot towards herself when sitting down be- 
side the table. This slot was a very harmless- 
looking thing that a good Spiritualist would 
not notice ; but I remembered that the most 
important results often turn upon the veriest 
trifles, and that Pearl Bryan's murderers had 
been detected and convicted through the mark 
on her shoe. 

Having seated myself at the opposite side of 
the table, I was furnished with a small piece of 
paper and a lead pencil, and requested to write 
no less than three names of deceased friends 

179 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

thereon, adding my own at the bottom. This 
was supposed to be for the information of the 
spirits, who were ignorant of my desires. The 
medium having voluntarily left the room, I 
wrote the name of my deceased wife in full and 
that of my aunt, and added my own at the 
bottom, whereupon the medium returned and 
again sat down opposite to me at the table. I 
was now instructed to fold the paper once, lay 
it on the table in front of me, and cover it with 
both of my hands. This done, the lady pro- 
duced a small double slate, asking me to rub 
my hands over the surface thereof. Interpret- 
ing this to be a device to get my hands from 
the paper, and possibly afford her an opportu- 
nity of reading its contents, I carefully held my 
left hand over the paper and did the rubbing 
with my right. I felt that this was very exas- 
perating to the kind spirits, but I was relent- 
less. Having finished these preliminaries, the 
slate was held under the table by the medium, 
and I was directed to withdraw my mind from 
the sitting as much as possible, which I inter- 
preted to mean to close my eyes and allow the 
trickery to go on undetected. I assumed an in- 
attentive look, but provokingly kept the medi- 
um's head within the scope of my vision. Several 
times the slate was withdrawn containing a few 

1 80 



Some Facts about Spiritualism. 

illegible scrawls, evidently written while it 
rested in the convenient slot. 

The slate was then placed on the floor un- 
der the table (after having been first held under 
the cover and written upon, as I inferred), and I 
was asked to rest my foot on it. In this position, 
I could feel it moved by some force which, I was 
convinced, proceeded from the medium's foot. 
On being removed from the floor, it was found 
to contain more illegible scrawls. After this, 
we adjourned to the back parlor for better con- 
ditions. Having again seated ourselves as be- 
fore, we renewed our efforts to get the refrac- 
tory spirits to manifest. The point to which 
the medium now directed all her efforts was 
the reading of the names on the paper held 
by me, for, until she accomplished this difficult 
feat, nothing but haphazard information could 
be conveyed in the messages. To accomplish 
this purpose, she resorted to various strata- 
gems. First, she suggested that I open the 
paper and place it within the folded slates. 
To use a slang phrase, I gave her the rope, 
and complied. Having again held the >slate 
under the table, she suggested that I write 
some questions, the paper and pencil lying on 
the table conveniently near. I politely de- 
clined, feeling convinced that when my eyes 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

were occupied in writing, she would drop her 
eyes into her lap and read the names on my 
slip. 

The medium now remarked on the intense 
heat proceeding from the stove, but even po- 
liteness to a lady in distress would not cause 
me to turn around. 

The next artifice employed by her, I think, 
was successful ; for, after rubbing her eyes, un- 
der cover of which I think she contrived to 
look downward and read my slip, she with- 
drew the slate with a scrawling message writ- 
ten thereon, addressed to me by my given 
name and signed with my deceased wife's 
name ; but its wording was non-committal, and 
commenced "My boy," that phrase being suit- 
able if the relationship was that of sister, 
mother or wife. On three occasions, while my 
head was partially turned, I detected her lips 
moving when the spirit voices were being pro- 
duced. She suspected that I had detected 
her, and expressed some doubt about her abil- 
ity to give me anything satisfactory. I agreed 
in this, and after some social conversation, and 
an invitation to call again, I took my departure. 

I shall not tax your patience by going into 
all the details of my experiences, showing how 
I sat on two occasions with a trumpet medium 

182 



Some Facts about Spiritualism. 

for an hour, without the spirits venturing to 
touch the trumpet; how, on another occasion, 
I sat in a closed and darkened room for two 
hours, with a circle of about twelve, breathing 
foul air and listening in patience to the child- 
ish trivialities coming from the celestial spheres, 
the medium sitting beside me, while the horn 
was manipulated by a confederate, the credu- 
lous Spiritualists swallowing the nonsense as 
though it were inspiration ; how the trumpet, 
at another time, refused to listen to the most 
earnest entreaties to move, and how these 
same experiences were repeated with the gen- 
tleman who abandoned cobbling, and took to 
the more lucrative and less arduous business 
of spirit medium. 

My experiences with the last-named medium 
were quite instructive. He had evidently 
learned from hard experience the danger of 
sitting for an unbeliever. With Spiritualists 
who had given proof of the faith that was in 
them, almost anything in the way of trickery 
might be ventured upon with impunity; but 
with the skeptics, it was otherwise. The first 
thing done by him as a preliminary to a seance, 
is to ascertain what amount of faith is in you, 
and if you give indications of unbelief, you are 
either put off on some convenient excuse, or, if 

183 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

you get a seance, nothing occurs. This med- 
ium is something of a philosopher, and rea- 
sons that if nothing occurs, his reputation is 
not materially damaged, but if he should be 
caught, the consequences might be disastrous. 
So he chooses the lesser of the two dangers. 
Having failed to get anything in my seance 
with him, I prepared a plan to test his powers 
in a way fair to all concerned. This he 
promptly declined. I thereupon placed him on 
my list of mediumistic humbugs. I speak of 
him thus in detail, because I am informed that 
he has a large and enthusiastic following, be- 
ing ranked as a star of the first magnitude in 
the local Spiritualistic firmament. 

The almost incredible extent to which the 
intellect of persons, otherwise sane, may be 
dominated by belief in Spiritualism, is well 
illustrated in James Payn's once popular ro- 
mance, "Under One Roof." To persons un- 
acquainted with what I may call the Psychol- 
ogy of Spiritualism, the incidents of this story 
may appear improbable, but, I assure you, it is 
no caricature, but a description of characters 
and incidents that have often found a parallel 
in the annals of Spiritualism. 

Some stories are told about a well-known 
professional medium of Cincinnati, who died 



Some Facts about Spiritualism. 

recently, that show how she profited, in more 
than one way, by the astounding credulity of 
the Spiritualists who frequented her dark cir- 
cles. Her specialty was in the manipulation of 
the trumpet. It was a common thing for the 
spirits, who manifested at her dark seances, to 
ask their friends who were present, to bring 
them things they wished to use in the spirit 
world — watches, rings, and other articles pos- 
sessing a mercantile value. These articles, 
when brought to the dark seance by the credu- 
lous dupes, and handed to the "spirits," mys- 
teriously disappeared — transported, apparently, 
to the spirit world. One lady, at the request 
of her "spirit husband," brought a meerschaum 
pipe, which was transported, as usual, to the 
spirit world, via the medium's rapid transit air 
line — in other words, found its way into the 
medium's collection of miscellaneous tributes 
to her cunning and rapacity. This lady, un- 
expectedly visiting the medium one day, dis- 
covered a male member of the family en- 
sconced in the kitchen, complacently smoking 
the self-same pipe. The medium explained 
that the pipe was not satisfactory to the spirit 
because it was not smoke-colored, and that the 
gentleman who was smoking it was coloring it 
to suit the spirit. This "explanation" re- 

185 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

moved all doubts, if there were any, from the 
lady's mind. 

Thus far, my experience with mediums had 
not been very encouraging, and I found that 
there was more truth than poetry in Artemus 
Ward's description of that class of frauds 
when he says: — "Just as soon as a man be- 
comes a regular out-and-out sperrit-rapper, he 
leeves off working, lets his hare grow all over 
his face, and commensis spungin his livin' out 
of other people. He eats all the dickshuna- 
ries he can find and goze around chock full of 
big words, scarein the wimmin folks and little 
children, and destroying the piece of mind of 
every famerly he enters. He don't do nobody 
no good, and is a cuss to society, and a pirate 
on other people's corn beef barrils. Admittin' 
all you say about the doctrines to be troo, I 
must say the regular professional sperrit-rapper 
— them as makes a bizzness on it — air about 
the most ornery set of cusses I ever encoun- 
tered in my life." 

Those good old days are gone, when, some 
thirty years ago, the spirit of " Katie King," 
materialized through the mediumship of Miss 
Florence Cook, nightly walked forth from the 
laboratory of Prof. Wm. Crookes, and, moving 
among the few select spectators present, en- 

186 



Some Facts about Spiritualism. 

tertained them for an hour by narrating her 
experiences in earth life, some two hundred 
years ago. Her pulse and heart beats were 
felt, her temperature taken, and pieces of her 
dress cut out as mementoes, and the dress im- 
mediately made whole again. At times, Prof. 
Crookes went into the laboratory, and with the 
aid of a phosphorescent lamp examined the un- 
conscious form of the medium, while the spirit of 
" Katie King " stood by. Truly, this was " Proof 
Palpable of Immortality," as it was characterized 
by Epes Sargent in describing the occurrences. 
What we are called upon to believe in this 
case makes a tremendous draft upon our cre- 
dulity — namely, that the spirit of a girl, dead for 
over two hundred years, took on flesh and bone 
and muscle, that the blood flowed in her veins, 
that her pulse and heart beats could be felt, 
that she ate candy and carried on an extended 
conversation, and was photographed. This all 
took place in the privacy and seclusion of the 
home of one of the most eminent scientific 
men of the day — the discoverer of the metal 
thallium, the inventor of the Radiometer and of 
the tube used in connection with the X-Ray, 
who vouches for the genuineness of the 
phenomena with his great name. Frank Pod- 
more, in his able work, "Studies in Psychical 

187 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

Research," suggests, as a possible solution, 
that Miss Cook may have bribed a servant of 
Mr. Crookes to allow the introduction into the 
house of a confederate who personated " Katie 
King." Podmore thinks any explanation, how- 
ever far-fetched or improbable, is preferable 
to that of the Spiritualists. It is to be noted, 
however, that Prof. Crookes (now Sir William 
Crookes) stated, in the course of an address 
several years ago before the British Associa- 
tion for the Advancement of Science, that his 
opinion as to those occurrences, as well as the 
experiments made by him with D. D. Home, 
in 1870, had undergone no material change. 
In fairness to the Spiritualists, it must be ad- 
mitted that the experiments with Home have 
never been satisfactorily explained, though the 
attempt was made by Dr. Wm. A. Hammond, 
in his work ''Spiritualism and Allied Nervous 
Derangements." Home was before the public 
almost continuously for twenty-five years, trav- 
eling all over the civilized world, exhibiting his 
peculiar powers, without pay, before crowned 
heads and eminent scientific, literary and pro- 
fessional men, without ever being detected in 
anything in the least suggesting trickery. He 
always courted investigation and invited the 
severest tests. There have been vague 



Some Facts about Spiritualism. 

charges of fraud, but no charge that had the 
slightest credible evidence to support it. His was 
certainly a remarkable career, and presents, as 
one of his biographers says, " a curious, and 
as yet unsolved problem." And, while such 
persons as Maskelyne, the English conjurer, 
contemptuously dismissed the feats of Home 
as due to jugglery, Frank Podmore, one of the 
keenest and most searching critics of psychical 
phenomena, is driven to the far-fetched expla- 
nation of "collective hallucination." In plain 
English, this means that two or more persons 
are all simultaneously in a state of mind in 
which they imagine they see an object that 
does not actually exist. I find this very diffi- 
cult to conceive ; in fact, the annals of Psychol- 
ogy present no case of " collective hallucina- 
tion " artificially induced. 

For many years, one of the most successful 
mediums was the famous slate- writer, Dr. Henry 
Slade, who escaped detection and exposure until, 
in an evil hour, he went to London, where, in a 
sitting with Prof. Ray Lankaster, the slate was 
suddenly seized immediately after the sound of 
writing had commenced. The slate, on exam- 
ination, was found to contain a complete mes- 
sage covering the entire side, and evidently 
prepared before the sitting began. The crim- 

189 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

inal prosecution that followed cut short Slade's 
career in England. He subsequently went to 
Leipsig, where, in a series of sittings with Prof. 
Zollner and other German scientists in 1878, 
very remarkable phenomena are said to have 
occurred, which resulted in the conversion to 
Spiritualism of some of the professors. An 
account of these sittings is to be found in 
Zollner's "Transcendental Physics." 

Subsequently to this, the Seybert Commis- 
sion had several sittings with him in this coun- 
try, and detected him in the most flagrant 
imposture. His usual method was to have a 
pile of slates, some of them containing pre- 
pared messages, conveniently near the table at 
which he was sitting, and, after diverting the 
sitter's attention by one of his many devices, 
he would quickly substitute one of the prepared 
slates for the one previously ascertained to be 
clean by the sitter. At other times, he would 
be called to the door by his servant — quite un- 
expectedly, you know — carelessly taking with 
him the slate previously examined by the sit- 
ter and found to be clean, and quietly handing 
it to the servant, would receive from the latter 
another, containing a message probably written 
from data obtained from papers in the overcoat 
pocket of the sitter, which he had removed 

190 



Some Facts about Spiritualism. 

and placed on the hat-rack on entering. The 
chairs that moved so mysteriously were manip- 
ulated by Slade's supple toes, which were con- 
veniently encased in slippers, to be removed as 
occasion required. These toes, when flashed 
from under the table, might easily be converted 
into a spirit hand by the Spiritualistic imagi- 
nation. 

While on a visit to Germany, Prof. George S. 
Fullerton, a member of the Seybert Commission, 
wishing to test the value of the Zollner experi- 
ments by some knowledge of the personality 
of the German professors, had interviews with 
several of them. He found that nearly every 
one was incapacitated in some way, either by 
physical defect or mental bias, from prosecu- 
ting such an inquiry with thoroughness and im- 
partiality. Two of them were partially blind, 
one was seventy-five years old, and Zollner 
himself came to the investigation with his mind 
prepossessed by his theory regarding four-di- 
mensional space. It was found that some of 
the most important experiments had been ar- 
ranged some days before they were tried, thus 
affording Slade every opportunity for prepara- 
tion. Thus, this imposing mass of evidence in 
favor of the reality of the physical phenomena 
of Spiritualism, was discredited. 

191 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

The Seybert Commission had been unable to 
find a single medium whose performances were 
not due to trickery. They advertised freely in 
the Spiritualistic papers, offering liberal pay, 
but were unable to secure the services of any 
genuine medium. They found Mansfield, the 
great spirit-postmaster, a transparent fraud, 
all of the sealed letters submitted to him hav- 
ing been surreptitiously opened and answered 
in the usual style of the quack medium. In- 
deed, his trickery was so palpable that they 
marveled at his success in posing as one of 
the leading lights of Spiritualism for so many 
years. 

Every day we are told of the wonderful phys- 
ical phenomena produced by this or that me- 
dium, and are asked to explain them. Very few 
people appreciate the difficulty of close and 
continuous observation, as that faculty is not 
called into play in the every-day affairs of life. 
No one but an expert is competent to observe 
and correctly report these alleged occurrences. 
When asked to account for these phenomena, 
I have invariably answered that I can not say 
how it was done, for, not having been present, 
I do not know what actually occurred. If I 
had seen what occurred, probably no further 
explanation would be required. To observe 

192 



Some Facts about Spiritualism. 

correctly what occurs at the seance of a me- 
dium who is expert at jugglery, one must be 
trained to close and continuous observation, 
and be without Spiritualistic bias. The Spirit- 
ualistic bias may render the best intellect liable 
to delusion, as in the case of Alfred R. Wal- 
lace, the eminent naturalist. The Spiritualistic 
bias has affected the judgment of this gentle- 
man to such an extent that he does not shrink 
from adopting the most preposterous conclu- 
sions, providing they chime in with his prepos- 
sessions. 

This is shown by the explanation Mr. Wal- 
lace advanced to account for a double or dop- 
pelganger, as the Germans call it, supposed to 
have been seen by Mr. Wm. Stead. 

Mr. Stead is editor of the English "■Review 
of Reviews'' is a very amiable and philan- 
thropic gentleman, of considerable literary abil- 
ity, and was also editor of the now defunct 
magazine, "Borderland" devoted to psychic 
research. Mr. Stead gave an account in "Bor- 
derland" of how he had followed, in London, a 
certain lady correspondent of his magazine un- 
til she reached his office, which she entered 
just about one minute in advance of him. On 
entering, inquiry disclosed the fact that she 
had not been there. 

i93 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

Mr. Stead is positive as to her identity. He 
thinks it was her double he saw. I should 
think that the most plausible explanation would 
be that of " mistaken identity." But Mr. Wal- 
lace, in a communication to "Borderland" sug- 
gests another. He thinks that the lady may 
have been transported bodily, in an instant, 
from the part of London where she was, to the 
place where Mr. Stead thought he saw her. 
This opinion he supports by citing the case of 
Mrs. Guppy, who was carried bodily from her 
home and deposited on a table, in the midst of 
a dark seance in London, having passed 
through the roof, leaving it intact. At the time 
the spirits seized her, she was engaged in mak- 
ing out her daily household accounts, and, 
when deposited on the table at the dark seance, 
she still held in her hand the pen wet with ink. 
Punch grew merry over the occurrence : — 

"There is a lady, Mrs. Guppy — 
Mark, shallow scientific puppy ! — 
The heaviest she in London, marry, 
Her, spirits three long miles did carry. 

" Upon a table down they set her 
Within closed doors. What ! you know better, 
And wer'e all dupes and self-deceivers ? 
Yah! Sadducees and unbelievers." 

I do not think any comment is necessary. 

194 



Some Facts about Spiritualism. 

The Spiritualist, in his narration of what 
took place at a seance, invariably omits, in en- 
tire good faith, however, what he regards as 
unimportant details. He omits to state that 
the medium, after having commenced opera- 
tions, was called to the door by a visitor. This 
was a means of effecting a substitution of 
slates often employed by Slade — a slate with 
a prepared message being handed to him by 
his alleged visitor. The Spiritualist fails to 
inform you that, while holding the slate under 
the table, it was thrown to the floor, appar- 
ently by accident — that being used as a cover 
to effect a substitution of slates. 

Dr. Richard Hodgson, Secretary of the 
American branch of the Society for Psychical 
Research, illustrates this liability to mistaken 
impressions, by the following occurrence. While 
in Calcutta, he saw an Indian juggler sitting 
on the ground, cross-legged, in front of a hotel, 
with some trick coin lying on the ground in 
front of him. The coin would jump up unac- 
countably at the command of the juggler. An 
Englishman, happening along, stopped to watch 
the performance, and asked the juggler if he 
could make his (the Englishman's) coin jump 
up in the same way. The juggler replied that 
he could. The coin was thereupon placed on 

i95 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

the ground with the others, and jumped up in 
like manner. Hodgson afterwards heard the 
Englishman relate the occurrence to a crowd 
of friends, stating that he had placed the coin 
on the ground with his own hands. This was 
not correct. Hodgson says that the English- 
man had taken the coin out of his pocket, and 
reached his hand down to place it on the 
ground with the others, when the juggler's 
hand deftly and carelessly intercepted it, tak- 
ing the coin from the Englishman's hand, and 
placing it on the ground. Thus, you see, the 
most important point — the very point where the 
trick came in — was incorrectly observed and re- 
ported. This is what Dr. Hodgson calls mal- 
observation. As a matter of fact, the juggler, 
after receiving into his hand the Englishman's 
coin, adroitly substituted a trick coin, which he 
placed on the ground. 

Dr. Hodgson, in commenting on this inci- 
dent, says he has no doubt that the manner in 
which the juggler reached out his hand and 
took the coin, entered the domain of the Eng- 
lishman's consciousness, but the impression 
made was only very slight, and was afterwards 
entirely displaced by the act of recalling in im- 
agination the manner in which he had himself 
taken the coin from his pocket, and stooped to 

196 



Some Facts about Spiritualism. 

place it on the ground. It is in this way that 
the most intelligent person — especially if his 
mind is biased by a belief in Spiritualism — is 
deceived. 

One of the most noted slate-writing mediums 
in England, some fifteen years ago, was Eglinton. 
He had attained such proficiency in this particu- 
lar line of mediumship,that professional jugglers 
like Kellar and scientific men like Alfred Russell 
Wallace, were deceived, and attributed his feats 
to the possession of occult power. He re- 
ceived numerous endorsements from men whose 
opinion was held in high esteem, among whom 
might be mentioned C. C. Massey, the well- 
known English barrister. Every week the 
Spiritualistic journals teemed with accounts of 
his marvels. He was even credited with exe- 
cuting the difficult feat of producing writing 
between locked and sealed slates. Mr. S. J. 
Davey, an intelligent Englishman, who was dis- 
posed to believe that occult agency was con- 
cerned in the production of the phenomena, 
had several sittings with Eglinton, and was at 
first much puzzled by what he saw. Finally, 
close watching was rewarded by a discovery of 
the modus operandi. It was found that Eglin- 
ton executed the writing under the table after 
having diverted the attention of the sitter by 

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Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

some artifice. When he was kept under close 
and continuous observation the results were 
negative — that is, nothing occurred; but just 
as soon as the sitter relaxed his vigilance, con- 
ditions became more favorable, so to speak, 
and the spirits lost their timidity and ventured 
upon the boldest and most surprising tricks. 
If the skeptical sitter pretended to be looking 
elsewhere, but stealthily watched Eglinton, the 
latter could be seen looking intently downward 
at the slate, evidently held on his knees while 
he was executing the writing. The slightest 
return of vigilance on the part of the sitter 
would cause him to suspend the writing, and 
quickly assume an erect posture. 

Questions, the answers of which he was ig- 
norant, would be answered in a non-committal 
way. A comparison by experts of the hand- 
writing of the alleged messages with his own 
known handwriting, revealed a startling re- 
semblance, which could only be explained on 
the theory that they were both written by the 
same person. In the handwriting of the mes- 
sages there was a transparent attempt at dis- 
guise, which only made the case against Eglin- 
ton stronger. 

Davey, having discovered the methods em- 
ployed by Eglinton to produce his slate-writing, 

198 



Some Facts about Spiritualism. 

conceived the idea of duplicating - the same. 
He commenced practicing, and in time, be- 
came so proficient that he was able to give a 
series of public sittings, including among his 
spectators both Spiritualists and unbelievers. 
The results of these sittings showed that the av- 
erage person is devoid of the power of close 
and continuous observation, and that almost 
every person is liable to lapses of memory 
that render his description of a seance almost 
worthless as evidence. The persons witness- 
ing Mr. Davey's performances were all unable 
to explain them, many referring them to the 
agency of disembodied spirits. 

The spectators were requested to write 
accounts of what they had witnessed, but no 
two of them agreed in what had occurred. 
Even after it was known that Mr. Davey pro- 
duced his slate-writing by jugglery, Alfred 
Russell Wallace persisted in ascribing it to 
spiritual agency, thus showing that even the 
scientific mind is liable to be warped by pre- 
possession. 

Since the days of Home, no medium has at- 
tracted so much attention and received such 
hearty endorsement from scientific men as Eu- 
sapia Paladino, an Italian peasant woman. In 
her presence, chairs and various other objects 

199 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

were moved and musical instruments played 
upon by invisible agencies, under conditions, it 
was asserted, that precluded trickery or decep- 
tion. As early as 1884, her powers had been 
tested by some of the scientific men of Italy, 
who pronounced the phenomena inexplicable 
by reference to any known physical laws. In 
1892, a commission of Italian scientists held a 
series of seances with her, and were equally 
puzzled by the phenomena witnessed by them. 
Her hands and feet were securely held, and 
every precaution against trickery appears to 
have been taken. Later, still, another series 
of experiments were conducted in Italy, in 
which Professor Oliver Lodge and Frederic 
Myers participated as representatives of the 
Society for Psychical Research. Again the 
scientific men were non-plussed. Eusapia was 
now induced to go to Cambridge, England, for 
the benefit of the Society for Psychical Re- 
search, where her psychic powers were subjected 
to more searching tests. Prof. Lodge, Fred- 
eric Myers, Prof. Henry Sidgwick and Prof. 
Richet, of France, took part in the experi- 
ments. Dr. Richard Hodgson, who had ex- 
posed the fraudulent character of the Theo- 
sophical marvels in India, and who had long 
suspected Eusapia of trickery, also joined 

200 



Some Facts about Spiritualism. 

in the investigation. It was through his inge- 
nuity that Eusapia was detected. 

The usual procedure at a seance was for Eu- 
sapia to sit in a chair with a person seated on 
each side of her, each one of whom held one of 
her hands. When the manifestations were about 
to commence, she would move her hands — still 
clasped in those of the persons charged with 
holding her — in a violent manner, swinging them 
in such a way as to bring them both together, 
so that she was enabled to cover the hands of 
the persons sitting on each side of her with 
one of her own, making it do duty for both, 
and leaving one of her own free to manipulate 
chairs and musical instruments. The semi- 
darkness in which the seances took place facil- 
itated this deception. This settled her pre- 
tensions to the possession of psychic power so 
far as the Society for Psychical Research was 
concerned. 

In fairness to the Spiritualists, it must be 
stated that Professor Richet and Frederic W. 
H. Myers, since the Cambridge seances, have 
subjected Eusapia to further tests at sittings 
held in Paris, and have declared themselves 
satisfied of the supernormal character of the 
phenomena occurring in her presence. 

No discussion of the evidences of Spiritual- 
201 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

ism would be complete without some reference, 
however brief, to the remarkable psychic ex- 
periences of Wm. Stainton Moses. These ex- 
periences, owing to the high character and so- 
cial position of Mr. Moses, are among the most 
impressive and unique in the history of Spir- 
itualism. 

A careful and dispassionate study of this 
man's life and character, and of the extraor- 
dinary phenomena alleged to have occurred in 
his presence, convinces me that he can not be 
fairly classed with honest enthusiasts like Mo- 
hammed, self-deluded visionaries like Sweden- 
borg, or with successful charlatans of the Mad- 
ame Blavatsky type. 

Mr. Moses was born in England in 1839, 
and received a collegiate education in prepa- 
ration for the ministry, in which, after his grad- 
uation, he served until about 1870. Mr. F. 
W. H. Myers, who knew him intimately for 
nearly twenty years, bears testimony, in a bio- 
graphical sketch contributed to the ''Proceed- 
ings" of the Society for Psychical Research, 
to his high intelligence and irreproachable 
character. 

His first psychic experiences occurred in 
1872, and continued, with varying force, for a 
period of over eight years. The phenomena 

202 



Some Facts about Spiritualism. 

occurred usually, though not invariably, in 
darkness or semi-darkness, and were witnessed 
only by a privileged circle of intimate friends, 
some of whom took notes of the incidents. 
To these notes, as well as to those made by 
Mr. Moses, we are indebted for our knowledge 
of these remarkable occurrences. Books and 
other articles were said to have been trans- 
ported, by an invisible agency, from distant 
rooms, musical instruments played upon while 
floating through the air, writing produced inde- 
pendently of mortal fingers, and Mr. Moses 
himself frequently carried from the floor to the 
ceiling without the intervention of any visible 
agency. It would require a volume to detail 
all the phenomena. These occurrences are 
said to have taken place almost daily, in the 
privacy of his domestic circle, for a period of 
eight years. Those who best knew Mr. Moses 
unhesitatingly dismissed all idea of fraud on 
his part. There appeared, in fact, to be an 
entire absence of mercenary, or other motives, 
by which people are ordinarily influenced to 
commit deceptions. He had every reason, 
apparently, to conceal these incredible things 
from the public, for fear of the ridicule and 
scorn that would follow their publication. 

203 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

Nor was there any doubt of his sanity among 
his acquaintances. 

Frank Podmore, the " doubting Thomas" of 
the Society for Psychical Research, finds himself 
hard pressed for a solution of the problem. In 
his " Studies in Psychical Research," however, 
he suggests, as the hypothesis involving the 
fewest difficulties, the possibility of Mr. Moses 
himself unconsciously doing these things while 
entranced. Those who are acquainted with 
Mr. Podmore's invincible skepticism will not 
wonder at this explanation, far-fetched as it is. 
All the circumstances of the case are utterly ir- 
reconcilable with it. Mr. Podmore also thinks it 
possible that Mr. Moses and his witnesses may 
have been the victims of what is known in psy- 
chological parlance as "collective hallucination. 
This theory is conclusively disproved by the 
material traces, that often remained after a 
seance, of the action of some exterior force. 
Chairs, tables and other objects were found to 
have been displaced. To my mind the matter 
presents itself as a simple question of evidence. 
The limits of my lecture, however, will not per- 
mit a recapitulation of that evidence, much 
less a detailed analysis of it. The evidence is 
readily accessible to any one desiring to exam- 
ine it, and can be found mainly in the pub- 

204 



Some Facts about Spiritualism. 

lished "Proceedings" above referred to. From 
a careful examination of that evidence — con- 
sidering also the evidence to similar phenom- 
ena in the case of D. D. Home — I am disposed 
to think that these things may have occurred 
substantially as reported by the witnesses. 
Their meaning must be determined by future 
investigations under more rigorous conditions, 
by those competent to conduct such researches, 
and in whose ability and judgment the public 
repose confidence. 

In conclusion, I will sum up the results of my 
study of this interesting subject — interesting 
as a study of the human mind, if in no other 
sense — by expressing the opinion that there is 
a small residuum of phenomena, after deducting 
the vast mass of fraud and delusion with which 
it is almost buried, that seems to justify further 
investigation, and which points to the possible, 
if not probable, existence of forces with which 
we are as yet but slightly acquainted. I do 
not think any one who has candidly and fairly 
examined the evidence presented by the lives 
of D. D. Home and Wm. Stainton Moses will 
deny this. 

All truth is relative, and often lies between 
the extremes of unreasoning belief and uncom- 
promising denial. He who believes because 

205 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

his grandfather believed, is no more unreason- 
able than he who accepts a theory merely be- 
cause it is new. The fanatic who is ready to burn 
his fellowman because of difference of religious 
or political opinion, is no more to be condemned 
than he who refuses to see any truth in any 
system of religion. They are both actuated 
by the same spirit of narrow intolerance that 
has covered the pages of history with the blood 
of martyrs in all the ages of the past. The 
true philosopher looks upon all religions as a 
product of the times, an outgrowth of the in- 
tellectual conditions amid which they flour- 
ished, no more to be quarreled with than the 
law of gravitation for dashing us to pieces. 

In my remarks on Spiritualism, I have not 
sought to establish any proposition; I have 
only attempted to find the truth and to indi- 
cate, incidentally, the pitfalls that beset the path 
of the investigator. If I have said anything 
that wounds your intellectual pride, it has not 
been my intention to inflict pain, but to speak 
the truth as I comprehend it. Spiritualism can 
gain no headway among intellectual and moral 
people until it has been purified of its immor- 
alities and superstitions. So long as Spiritual- 
ists countenance and support the fraudulent 

206 



Some Facts about Spiritualism. 

mediums, they must expect to be frowned upon 
by all honest people. 

I repeat, after a very careful study of the life 
of D. D. Home, and the phenomena said to have 
occurred through him, I am disposed to con- 
cur in the opinion of such competent observ- 
ers as Prof. William Crookes and Dr. Richard 
Hodgson, that the theory of fraud is inade- 
quate to explain many of those phenomena, 
and that we are driven to the conclusion that 
they indicate the possible existence of some 
force in nature heretofore unrecognized by 
science. The exact nature of that force, and 
the manner of its operation, must be deter- 
mined by future investigations. 

I believe the explanations of the phenomena 
of life and mind given by materialism are 
inadequate and unsatisfactory. I believe the 
human mind contains powers and forces hith- 
erto undreamed of by our materialistic philos- 
ophers, dim intimations of which are just be- 
ginning to be received. I believe that we are 
on the verge of discoveries in Psychology that 
will throw much light on the problems of mind 
that have heretofore baffled solution. 

These discoveries will come, not through 
Spiritualism, which in the past has been so 
barren of practical results and so fruitful of 

207 



Fact and Fancy in Spiritualism, etc. 

fraud, but along the line of Psychical Research, 
which has undertaken to investigate, by scien- 
tific methods, a field hitherto handed over to 
dreamers and superstition mongers. 

If what Psychical Research has accomplished 
in the brief period of its existence is an au- 
gury of its future work, then much greater 
achievements may be confidently anticipated 
in the years to come. 

208 






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